I would like everybody to stop putting up big
inflatable Christmas figures on their lawns. Especially big
inflatable Christmas figures with lights inside them.
Theyve been around for a couple of years now, but in the
past youd just see one or two in the course of a ten-minute
drive, and now theyre all over the place. They give me the
creeps. And the more jolly, happy, and festive-looking these
things are supposed to be, the creepier they actually are. In the
daytime they just look silly but once the sun goes down,
its a whole different story. Brrr!

Yeah, yeah, I know what youre thinking.
"What a little wussy-boy, scared by a big balloon,"
right? Wrong. Thats only what you THINK youre
thinking. What youre really thinking is, "Wow!
Im glad this humor columnistand of course hes
more than just a humor columnist, much MUCH morehad the
guts to say out loud what folks like me are too doggone
frightened even to admit to ourselves. Thank goodness someone is
finally addressing this issue! "

Hey, youre welcome.

You know and I know that these big inflatable
Santas and Frostys are the most disturbing things weve ever
seen. You could have a guy with a hockey mask and a meat clever
skulking around on your front lawn and Id snicker. But you
stick an eight-foot tall Santa-shaped balloon out there and I am
seriously weirded out.

Its a lot like clowns. Everybody knows
theyre really scary. I mean, in a circus, theyre
fine, dont get me wrong. Nobody likes a good clown act more
than I do. You get 25 of them climbing out of a Volkswagen and
Im laughing so hard the tears are running down my cheeks.
But put just one of them in my closet laughing maniacally and I
totally lose it. HE DOESNT BELONG THERE. I thought I lived
in a world where there are no clowns in my closet, and whoops!
there he is. This means that suddenly, everything I thought I
knew about the world was wrong. Even before he fires up the chain
saw and starts chasing me through the house, and of course
hes already locked all the doors from the outside. I HATE
clowns.

Now, I dont hate 8-foot Santa balloons.
But I fear them, as do all normal people.

Question: What kind of people want to have an
eight-foot tall Santa Claus on the front lawn, lit from below in
the most sinister way imaginable? Odd people? Crazy People? STARK
RAVING INSANE POSSIBLY CANNIBAL PEOPLE?

Answer: Likely. VERY likely. But ultimately the
issue isnt the people who put the 8-foot Santa balloons on
the lawn. Its the 8-foot Santa balloons themselves.

Heres the thing about an inflatable
8-foot Santa: Its WRONG, just like that clown in your
closet. Santa isnt that tall. This is something else,
something that looks like Santa but obviously isnt. But it
went through a lot of trouble to look like Santa, didnt it?
Why? Whats it up to? Why is it just standing there on the
lawn with that homicidal grin plastered on its face? Was it
holding its arm up like that a couple of minutes ago? Wasnt
it looking the other way?? And hey, what happened to the paper
boy? Did he really just "run away" or did something...
else happen?

You know that movie, "The Thing," the
one with Kurt Russell? Theres this alien monster that can
assume any shape. It can look exactly like a dog, or like the guy
sitting to your left. I think its safe to say that no one
can look at one of those 8 foot Santas without thinking about
that movie.

Question: Do I really think these stupid
balloons are actually alien monsters that move when Im not
looking at them?

Answer: I see no reason to take chances here.
And Im not limiting this to Santa. As frightening as the
big inflatable Santas are, nothing is a frightening as the big
inflatable
Spongebob-wearing-a-Santa-hat-and-sitting-on-a-giant-snowball. I
dont want to be driving through the Hunterdon County woods
and go around a bend and see that.

So what is to be done about this? Am I
suggesting some sort of vigilantism? I am not. First of all, this
paper carries the address and phone numbers of our elected
representatives, usually on the editorial page someplace. Look
around. They need to be alerted to this situation. They also need
to be altered to that radio station where theyre always
playing two Led Zeppelin songs in a row, like theyre doing
us this big freaking favor. Anyway, write your representative and
your senators and let them know how disturbed you are by these
inflatable Santas. (In fact, we have a brand NEW Senator and you
should probably just pick up the phone and call him). Suggest
possible fines and (substantial!) jail terms for people who keep
putting them up year after year. Theyre your
representatives and they WANT to hear from you.

Shortly before Christmas the year that we all
turned 11, Picarillo, Calvano and I were in Calvanos
basement tuning the portable TV. Calvanos older brother
Duff had taken up residence in the basement during the summer and
had slowly been adding various tokens of civilization, such as
black light posters, muscle magazines, and of course the portable
black & white television set. Hed run the flat brown
antenna wire out the casement window and up the side of the house
to his very own antenna, which was attached to the same chimney
as the antenna that delivered the broadcast signals to the big
new family color set in the living room. Whenever the wind moved
either antenna, the image on both sets would break up. The images
would also break up if the wind stirred Duffs antenna wire,
which was secured to an aluminum rainspout with two staples
placed roughly 40 feet apart. Mrs. Calvano was terrified of the
antenna wire. She was sure some day if would break lose and wrap
itself around somebodys neck and shed come home from
the grocery store to find the strangled, electrocuted corpse of
some neighborhood toddler dangling from the roof. That very
thing, she told us, had happenedon the front page of the
National Enquirer, no less! just a couple of years earlier.
Although in that case it hadnt been an antenna wire,
exactly, it had been a downed power line, and the unfortunate
neighborhood toddler had been a drunken streetcar conductor in
Manila. But still...

But still, Calvano and Picarillo and I were in
the basement trying to get a decent picture on Duffs TV
because there was an Aztec mummy movie on, and we were having no
success. For some reason, Aztec mummy movies were only shown on
TV (in our area, anyway) around Christmas time. We loved Mexican
monster movies, and particularly Mexican Aztec mummy movies. The
Aztec mummies looked much funkier than the Egyptian variety
favored by Hollywood. Also, the Aztec mummies sometimes turned
out to be Aztec WEREWOLF mummies. We would find this out when an
Aztec mummy was pursuing the movies heroine, and the moon
would rise, and suddenly the Aztec mummy would have a snout. It
wouldnt move any faster, it would just have a snout. It
made no difference to the story at all. It was just a snout for
snouts sake. American werewolves wouldnt have snouts
for another 15 years. But at that moment the picture was so poor
we couldnt tell whether the vague blur of visual static on
the screen had a snout or not.

We found that if Picarillo picked up the slack
in the antenna wire by holding it out at arms length a foot
or so away from the casement window, we could at least hear the
audio. Picarillo didnt think this was a good enough trade
off to justify standing that way for 90 minutes, so he let the
wire drop. We continued playing with the fine tuning knob and the
rabbit ears atop the set, to no discernible effect. We were
unaware that the picture was more scrambled than usual because
Mr. Calvano was up on the roof, stringing Christmas lights, and
he had Duffs antenna wire wrapped around one of his ankles.

"Boys!" cried Mrs. Calvano.
"Come up! Cookies!"

Mrs. Calvano had been baking Christmas cookies
all afternoon and we had been dreading this moment.

For the better part of two years, wed
been arguing about which of our mothers was the worst cook. I
maintainedproudly, of coursethat my mother was not
only the worst cook in town but possibly on the planet. She once
boiled away all the water in a pot full of pasta and burned the
pasta so badly she had to throw away the pot. Can you top that,
anybody?

Nobody could. But when it came to bad Christmas
cookies, even I had to admit that Mrs. Calvano was the gold
standard. They werent burntthe most common Christmas
cookie mishap. After all, even a decent cook can leave the cookie
pan in the oven a few minutes too long. Mrs. Calvanos
cookies were never burnt. They were just unspeakably foul. They
smelled fine while they were baking, but something horrible
happened before they got to the big Christmas plate, perhaps
something like the gruesome transporter malfunction in "Star
Trek: The Motion Picture."

"Help yourselves, boys, but save some for
Mr. Calvano. Hes up on the roof, making the house
Christmassy!"

"Gosh, mom," said Calvano, "He
deserves ALL the cookies!"

"Well, arent you the sweetest,"
said Mrs. Calvano.

"We should bring em up there now.
Hes up in the wind and all, and he needs some calories if
hes gonna keep warm. Some delicious calories!"

"Now you be careful on that ladder,"
she said. Mrs. Calvano transferred the cookies to a Tupperware
container and Calvano put on his mittens.

Theres a lot of disagreement as to
precisely what transpired up on the roof in the next few minutes.
Mr. Calvano said he slipped and accidentally dislodged
Duffs antenna; Calvano told us that his father was so
terrified of the cookies that he screamed "Nnhhggg!
Nnhhgg!" and tried to kick the Tupperware container away,
not realizing the wire was wrapped around his ankle. Duff said
that his father had gone up with the sole intention of getting
rid of the extra antenna, because otherwise he would have made
Duff put up the lights. Mr. Calvano said that was absurd and that
he would never have let Duff put up the lights because Duff would
have spelled out swear words with them.

But theres no disputing that the extra
antenna did not survive the afternoon, and that Mr. Calvano was
therefore able to enjoy the Giants-Packers game the following
afternoon via the clearest picture the TV had displayed in nearly
6 months.

We never found out whether the Aztec mummy was
also a werewolf or not. The cookies were scattered all over the
yard, where they remained well into the spring. Not even the
squirrels would take a chance on Mrs. Calvanos cookies.

NEON
PASTA

"Hey," said Mulberry Street Joey
Clams. "I got an idea." His face was grotesquely
scrunched up, as it always was when there was an idea forming in
his cortex. Thinking was a painful process for him, like passing
a kidney stone.

He was staring at the radiator, which happened
not to be radiating at the moment. That was because last week
Mulberry Street Joey Clams snapped off the valve that regulated
the heat. We used a wrench to open and close it for a couple of
days, until he stripped the thread. Now it was closed forever. It
was basically a radiator-shaped piece of art.

I was hoping that Mulberry Street Joey
Calms idea would concern getting the Custom Neon Sign Shop
warm. I was hoping it would make sense, as well, but I was to be
disappointed on both counts. "The radiator looks like a
giant pasta," he said finally. "See, its got all
these loops and stuff? And what do letters have?"

I was silent.

"They got loops and stuff!" he cried.
"Same as the pasta. We could make NEON PASTAS for
people!"

"Well, we could make some neon
pastas," I conceded. "Radiatore is all loops and bends,
but if somebody wanted bowties, theyd be out of luck."

"I disagree," he said, poking me in
the chest with a finger. "A bow tie is two "A"s
joined together at the skull, like that monkey skeleton we seen
at the Chinatown Museum."

"Um..."

"Which kind of monkey do you think is
rarer, any idea? The ones like the skeleton at the Chinatown
Museum where you got two bodies kinda glued together at the
skull, or the kind with two heads on one body?"

"I dont really know..."

"The kinds with two bodies, theyd
drive each other crazy trying to swing through the trees, you
know? One grabs THIS vine, and one grabs THAT vine, and nothing
happens. And then theyd be lookin at each other and
doin that jabber jabber talk. You ever notice that when
monkeys talk it always sounds like theyre swearing?"

"Not really."

"Fact. But forget the monkey stuff for a
minute. You know what the greatest thing about neon pasta
is?"

I did not.

"Theres no spelling!"

I sighed. Mulberry Street Joey Clams thought
that the hardest thing about constructing neon signs was making
sure they were spelled correctly.

I didnt think that spelling was much of a
problem with our signs. They were usually spelled correctly. They
just didnt work when you plugged them in. Sometimes they
blew up.

But unusual things often impressed Mulberry
Street Joey Clams. One afternoon we turned on Channel 13 (because
"The Bold and the Beautiful" had been pre-empted by
some sort of press conference) and watched Pavarotti singing a
program of arias by Verde and Donizetti. When it was over,
Mulberry Street Joey Clams said, "Wow. Imagine having to
remember all those words!"

But I digress.

"Mulberry Street Joey Clams," I said,
"Not only is there no spelling, theres no market.
Nobody wants neon pastas."

"You dont know that."

"Well, why would they?"

"Well, why wouldnt they? Hey! We
could use the neon pasta to HEAT this place!"

"No, we couldnt," I said.

"Why?"

"Mulberry Street Joey Clams, weve
been making neon signs for 10 months. You never realized they
dont give off much heat? It would be like heating the place
with a transistor radio. But then, why would you realize they
dont give off much heat? They blow up before you can get
close enough to find out."

"Okay. But. If we could get the neon signs
HOTTER, we could heat the place. Right?"

"You mean if we invented some new kind of
neon sign that gave off heat instead of light? Sure. Why
not."

"All right then!"

"Of course so far we havent even had
a lot of success making normal neon signs..."

"Well, maybe thats been the whole
problem."

"I think the whole problem has been that
the signs blow up."

"Nah, nah, youre thinkin like
a loser."

"Its a miracle I can think at all in
this temperature. I can see my breath. What is it, like 35
degrees in here?"

"All right! All right! Im gonna go
out and get a heater! They got them at the hardware store."
He started counting out bills from the petty cash drawer.

"Dont get one of those kerosene
heaters. Wed have to keep buying kerosene, and wed
probably burn the place down again." He stiffened. Mulberry
Street Joey Clams had burned down the placeor anyway gutted
itover the summer by replacing all the fuses in the fuse
box with pennies and then plugging in about a dozen more
appliances than the current could handle. It was something of a
sore subject with him. I pressed on. "Get one of the heaters
you plug in, that goes on the floor and its shaped kind of
like a fan."

"I said get a fan-shaped radiator. Why
would I tell you to get a fan? We got two fans!" This was
true. We cooled ourselves off during the dog days of August with
a couple of fans almost identical to the one hed just
scored.

"Well... we could take it back..."

"WE?"

"Im not takin it back!
Theyd think I was a moron."

"No, they think youre a moron now,
buying a fan when its 20 degrees out. Youll actually
go up in their opinion if you return it."

"Stop thinking like a loser. This is an
opportunity!"

"Oh?"

"Were sitting here trying to figure
out how to get the heat outta the neon sign and into the room,
right? Wah-Lah!" He placed the fan behind a (miraculously)
functional sign wed madeHappy Birthday
Augieand clicked it on. "Thisll blow the
heat all over the room. Watch."

"All Im feeling is a cold
breeze."

Mulberry Street Joey Clams parked himself in
the path of the neon-enhanced air current. "I think Im
feeling something."

His hair was waving in the breeze.
"Warmin up," he shivered. "I can feel
it."

RETURN
OF KONG

I cant remember a time when I didnt know every
single frame of "King Kong." I have a fairly clear
memory of buying my first issue of "Famous Monsters of
Filmland Magazine." It was number 11, published in September
1960, which means that I had just turned 5. And I bought it
because I mistook the hairy gent on the cover for King Kong (It
was actually the late Oliver Reed, totally wolfed out for his
role in "Curse of the Werewolf"). But the point is, I
was five years old and Kong and I were already old friends,
notwithstanding the fact that I mistook Oliver Reed for him. I
suspect that a lot of other people made that same mistake over
the years.

I saw "Kong" at regular intervals well into adult
hood; its a movie that grows up with you. When I was 14 and
on the verge of losing interest in giant ape movies, I noticed
for the first time that Fay Wrays boob pops out of her
dress in one scene (when she and Robert Armstrong bob to the
surface of the water after Kong battles the pterodactyl). Yes,
"King Kong" was just as riveting to Jeff the Healthy
Adolescent as it had been to Jeff the Creepy Toddler.

There is probably no movie less in need of a remake than
"King Kong," (except possibly "3-D
Stewardesses") and yet people keep remaking it. It was
remade in 1976 by Dino De Laurentiis, who not only produced it
but went on the talk show circuit and insisted that his fiasco
was way better than the crappy old black-and-white 1933 version.
"The old-a one," he said in the most totally bogus
Italian accent since Chico Marx, "was-a scary. Thees-a one
is a LOAF story." And quite the loaf it was. At a cost of
millions, he built a 60 foot mechanical ape that was used in one
(1) scene for roughly five (5) seconds. The rest of the time Kong
was a guy running around in a gorilla suit. As gorilla suits go
it was top of the line, but King Kong is not a guy in a gorilla
suit. Not ever. True, De Laurentiis partly redeemed himself 25
years later by producing "Hannibal," in which Anthony
Hopkins eats Ray Liottas brain; but Anthony Hopkins will
have to eat a lot of brains to make up for that abysmal 1976
"King Kong."

If you have a television set you are no doubt aware that there
is a new "Kong" opening up any minute, and on the basis
of the commercials Im willing to concede that its
almost certainly a huge improvement on the 76 model. What
Im not willing to concede is that it needs to exist at all.
The 1933 "Kong can not be improved upon.

At least that was my thinking until I stumbled across this
paragraph by CNNs Jonah Goldberg:

"Explain to me one thing. A bunch of
explorers go to an island. They find a giant
gorilla. That's cool. But they also find dinosaurs.
They go crazy for the giant gorilla --
which is totally legit. But they're completely
nonchalant about the dinosaurs. Ho, hum,
found a T-Rex zzzzzz.... But did you see that
monkey!?!"

Well. As noted, Ive seen "Kong" scores of
times, and each time I sat there totally absorbed in it, and
never once in the past 45 years did this occur to me. It shook
me. Ive had to completely rethink my relationship with
"Kong." Carl Denham and his crew encounter a whole
bunch of dinosaurs. I can understand why they might be a little
leery of attempting to capture a tyrannosaurus and then transport
it 6000 miles across the Pacific. Remember that scene in some
Chris Farley / David Spade movie where they stick a dead deer in
the backseat of their car and then it turns out not to be dead?
You dont want that happening with a T-Rex. Fine. But if
youre looking to make some bucks on the exhibition circuit,
a dead dinosaur (really dead) would certainly pull in plenty of
paying customers, and you wouldnt have the food bills
youd have with a 50-foot gorilla. Or the *ahem* clean-up
problems. And not only does the crew kill a stegosaurus, Kong
kills a whole bunch of dinosaurs including the tyrannosaurus.
Theyre just lying around waiting for somebody to drag them
away. But nobody does.

So if the new version addresses the issue of Why We
Arent Bringing Back Any Dead Dinosaurs, all well and good.
We shall see. (The 76 version gets around this by not
having any dinosaurs at all, just a big snake. Feh! Feh!) From
the ads, it appears that the filmmakers have restored the giant
spider sequence that was cut from the 1933 version, and again, I
cant help but approve. There is no movie, no matter how
excellent, that wouldnt be improved by the addition of a
giant spider (with the possible exception of "3-D
Stewardesses").

And if the film proves to be a roaring success, perhaps it
will convince the Powers That Be to revive a cherished tradition.
For the first 30 years of my life, channel 9 in NYC would show
"King Kong," "Son of Kong," and "Mighty
Joe Young" every Thanksgiving. It wasnt Thanksgiving
without non-stop giant apes. Then, about 20 years ago they just
stopped. The day they decided not to show ape movieson Thanksgiving any more is the day Western
civilization officially went into the toilet. If this most sacred
of all Thanksgiving traditions is brought back thanks to the new
Kong, we will all owe it in incalculable debt.

ASK
THE LEFTOVER BAG O GIBLETS EXPERT GUY

DEAR LEFTOVER BAG O GIBLETS EXPERT GUY:

If, as you keep insisting, giblets are such a
wonderful idea, why do they only come with turkeys? Why
dont the beef people throw in a bag of cow-type giblets
whenever you buy a porterhouse? I would choose a steak over a
turkey any time, and I imagine that goes giblet-wise as well.

(SIGNED)

NOT SO CRAZY ABOUT TURKEY GIBLETS BUT MIGHT GO
FOR THE COW-TYPE ONES

DEAR NOT:

First of all, giblets are defined as the
visceral organs of a fowl. So the cow will not have any
giblets, unless the cow had turkey for Thanksgiving dinner and
kept the little bag. Second of all, even there was such a thing
as cow giblets, you wouldnt get them gratis with a
porterhouse any more than you get them gratis with a package of
chicken wings. Youd have to buy the whole cow. In the third
place, they wouldnt fit in a little paper sack. You would
need at least a duffel bag and maybe even a set of luggage to
haul them away. Believe me, no one is going to give you a free
set of luggage just because you bought a porterhouse.

*

DEAR LEFTOVER BAG O GIBLETS EXPERT GUY:

Once again, the bag of giblets burst into flame
while the turkey was cooking. Not only was the turkey scorched,
but the stuffing was ruined and the little plastic thing
thats supposed to pop out when the turkey is done popped
out three hours early and kind of melted all over the side of the
turkey. Is there any way that I can prevent this from happening
next year?

(SIGNED)

GETTING A LITTLE TIRED OF THIS

DEAR GETTING:

One possibility: insist on a giblet bag made of
non-flammable material, such as Pyrex™. Another
possibility: remove the bag before putting the turkey in the
oven. Although you dont mention what happened to the
giblets themselves, the Leftover Bag O Giblets Expert Guy
infers that they were consumed in the blaze. Condolences.

*

DEAR LEFTOVER BAG O GIBLETS EXPERT GUY:

Heres one all your readers can try at
home. You know those little sacks of chocolate coins that kids
get on their birthdays? I know I will always treasure the look on
my sisters face when she opened what she thought was a
little bag of chocolate coins and found herself staring into a
bag of giblets.

(SIGNED)

BAG OF GOBLETS: FREE. LOOK ON FACE: PRICELESS.

DEAR BAG:

Excellent suggestion, Bag. The Leftover Bag
O Giblets Expert Guy never fails to marvel at how his
readers continue to come up with great giblet-oriented games and
activities. And here comes another one!

*

LEFTOVER BAG
O GIBLETS HOLIDAY FUN TIP NUMBER 37

Ah, a leftover bag of
gibletsits like every turkey comes with its own
"Fear Factor: The Home Game." But thats not the
only game in town. If your family is like my family, theres
no greater holiday treat for you than a rousing game of Monopoly
that plays itself out over an entire eveningor even a
weekend. But if your family is like my family, youre always
losing the little shoe or the top hat or the Scotty dog and
youve got to make do with whatever tiny items happen to be
at hand. Why not make sure that those tiny items are giblets?
Seal them in polyurethane and paint them in festive
colorsand then ditch that thimble and that stupid little
shoe once and for all!

*

DEAR LEFTOVER BAG O GIBLETS EXPERT GUY:

I tried your idea of using giblets to spell out
Happy Birthday on top of the birthday cake and it
didnt go over too well. You might want to rethink this one.

(SIGNED)

NO LONGER WELCOME AT THE HOMES OF DECENT PEOPLE

DEAR NO:

We have received a great deal of feedback on
this issue, and I regret to say that most of it, like yours, was
negative. Morale here at Expert Guy HQ hasnt been this low
since the 1997 Say It with Tripe debacle. Apparently
some sorts of cake frosting are simply not compatible with
giblets, and until we establish just which ones they are, we urge
you not to attempt this project.

We also thought about urging you to ignore our
suggestion about using giblets for a pizza topping, but after due
consideration we realized that its still no where near as
gross as anchovies.

MORE RETURNS

Last week I explained the origin of my dread of
visiting the "returns" department. To recap briefly,
there were three factors. (1) Guys arent taught how to do
it, so we dont know. And since the only way to find out is
to ask, we will never find out. This is related to our inborn
inability to ask directions when lost (since this would mean
clueing in some hick that we dont know where we are and
thereby putting him one up on us) or read instructions before
attempting to assemble something (since this wastes valuable time
that could be put to better use putting the object together
incorrectly and taking it apart again, possibly multiple times).
(2) The fear of looking like a dork for buying something that you
are now returning. This applies even when returning something
thats defective. In fact, it applies even more strongly
what kind of a dork buys defective stuff? Some of us are so
terrified of looking like a total dork that we spend all our time
trying NOT to look like a total dork, which is an absolutely
sure-fire way of signaling that you are a total dork. (3) We want
to avoid the trauma of trying to return something and THEY REFUSE
TO TAKE IT BACK. What is more pathetic than driving all the way
to the mall with an ugly sweater and then driving all the way
back home with it? Nothing. And this was a real fear when I was
in my salad days. Now, of course, virtually every store in the
world will accept returns for virtually any reason whatsoever
unless youve set the thing on fire, but in 1973 "I
hate it" was often considered an insufficient reason to give
you your money back. In fact, "It doesnt work"
was often considered an insufficient reason to give you your
money back.

There is a fourth reason for my long-time
reluctance to return stuff that I did not mention: I felt that if
I returned something to the store, the Returns people
wouldnt like me. I never quite articulated it to myself
like that until recently, and if someone had suggested such a
thing I would have denied it with complete conviction, but
its a fact. And worse: I apparently thought that if I
DIDNT return stuff, the folks in retail WOULD like me. This
is even more pathetic. I was nearly 40 when I finally understood
that everybody who has ever rung up a sale for me, or answered a
question about a price, or even nodded a greeting as I walked in
the door of the department store, hates me. They hate you, too,
incidentally. Even people who love working retail would love it a
lot more if they didnt have to deal with customers. You
know in the movie "High Fidelity," where Jack Black
refuses to sell some guy a record because the guy wont
appreciate it? Im certain that all sales people would do
that if they could get away with it. In fact, if they could push
a button and blow your head up when you said, "Excuse me,
but could you tell me..." they would do it.

And thats okay; once I got that straight,
I could look them in the eye and tell them I was bringing back
these jeans because they make me look like I have no butt AND NOT
CARE. Yes, I know that later back in the stock room theyre
snickering that it aint the jeans, pal, but I dont
care about that either. Because (1) Im making them do this
pointless busy work and (2) it is SO the jeans. Ive been
doing these "get great glutes in time for the summer"
exercises from Mens Health and they really
work.

Why do they hate us? Well, I spent about an
hour recently in the return room at an Ikea, and in that time I
saw:

A woman returning two sofas. The sofas were
upright on furniture dollies and still covered in plastic. Did I
say "still?" Somehow a couple of cheeseburger wrappers
slipped under one of the plastic packing covers. The woman did
not notice them until she saw the girl at the return desk staring
at them. From her reactioncovering her mouth and then
glaring at her sonIm guessing they didnt slip
in at the factory.

A man returning some sort of unassembled
cabinet because he didnt realize it had to be assembled.
The cardboard box containing it was about the size of an
unabridged dictionary. Maybe he figured it was one of those
new-fangled inflatable cabinets.

Remember what I said above about how you could
return virtually anything for virtually any reason unless you set
the thing on fire? A gentleman was returning
somethingIm not sure whaton the grounds that it
had not been correctly tied to the roof of his car and had
sustained some damage as a result somewhere on Rt. 1-9. Return
guy: "The receipt says you bought this a week and a half
ago." "Yes." "And youre just returning
it now? Why didnt you bring it back as soon as it fell off
the car?" "It fell off on the way here."
"When you were bringing it back?" "Yes."
"So you had it tied to the roof of your car for a week and a
half?" "No, no, no. I tied it up there to bring it
back." "It fell on the way there AND the way
here?" "No." "So YOU didnt tie it
correctly to the roof?" "That is correct."
"So why were you bringing it back?" "It got pretty
banged up when it fell off the roof." (This conversation may
still be in progress).

When my turn camewe had to take numbers,
like at the meat counter at the deli, and of course just like at
the meat counter at the deli there was a little kid at work
pulling 20 or 30 numbers off the machine to amuse himself and his
charming motherI was almost embarrassed that I was just
returning a cutting board, and because it had sharp edges I
hadnt noticed because of the packaging. The guy just nodded
and checked off some boxes on a form and that was that. He gave
me a look like... well, not such much like he wouldnt push
a button and blow up my head if the opportunity presented itself,
but like if there was a limit to the number of head-blowing-up
buttons he could push, he might choose some of the buttons that
werent wired to my head.

Its the best any of us can hope for.

Many Happy
Returns (Part One)

There are many important things that you can
learn from what my father used to call "your punk friends in
the street corner." (This was so long ago that when my dad
said punk, he meant something uncomplimentary). It
was indeed on street corners where young men wise in the ways of
the world first imparted to me the secrets of both my incredible
success with women and my brilliant financial strategies. These
young men remained broke and celibate well into their thirties
but I didnt feel that was relevant. Just because they
couldnt follow their own advice didnt mean it
wasnt any good. I mean, if you want dieting advice, do you
ask some surfer dude with the metabolism of a humming bird who
can eat a chocolate cake the size of his head every day and never
gain an ounce, or the 279 pound girl at the beauty parlor
whos been on every diet featured on Oprah since
1987? Am I right, or am I right, as my pepperoni-complexioned
turnip-shaped mentors on the street corner used to say.

All their advice, I must admit, was not
uniformly excellent; I was once told that I should get at least
one pair of really big underpants to wash when I went to
the laundromat. "Chicksll see this enormous pair of
jockey shorts, theyll see youre on the slender side,
theyll start thinking about why a skinny guy like you needs
a huge pair of underpants and theyll figure you are what
the author of the excellent highly recommended absolutely true
book "My Secret Life" calls a exceptionally
well-favored young man. Fact." I never tried this
technique but many years later I mentioned this anecdote to a
young lady and she said that in the unlikely event that a girl
noticed I was washing a really big pair of underpants, she would
have assumed I had a fat boy friend. Yes, on reflection the
really big underpants advice was useless.

But there is one area where I am afraid their
advice was worse than useless, and that is Store Return Policies.
Guys who hang out on street corners do not enjoy shopping. You
either hang out or you shop if youre a guy, because if
youre a guy and you shop, guys wont hang out with you
any more. (Girls, on the other hand, understand how to hang while
they shop. It may be genetic). Now, if you dont shop, you
dont learn about store return policies, except through
cartoons or sitcoms, where the "return" desk is
inevitably staffed by a surly gargoyle. But so what? you might
ask. If you dont shop, why do you need to know about return
policies?

Because there was a single exception to the
hang out or shop law, and that was records. It was
okay to shop for records, and you could even do it in groups.
There was a rule that you couldnt actually refer to it as
shopping. Nobody every said Lets go
shopping for records. It was always, Lets check
out the record store. You might start to say
shopping, but if you didnt somehow alter it in
mid syllable"Lets go shhhhhhhhhhhoot some
pool," for instanceyou would be ragged mercilessly for
weeks.

So youd check out the record store, and
maybe buy some records, and then go to somebodys bedroom or
basement and listen to them, while looking at the album covers.
(Vinyl records generally clocked in between 15 and 20 minutes a
side, so youd want record covers with a lot of stuff on
them or else it got boring).

But vinyl, miracle substance though it was, was
not perfect and from time to time youd get a defective
record that skipped or clicked or caught the needle in such a way
that the same few seconds were repeated ov were repeated ov were
repeated ov were repeated over and over, just like that. When
that happened, common sense said: return the record.

"Dont even bother," said one of
my punk friends from the street. "That song stinks anyway.
You should run a nail across cuts two, three, and five while
youre at it. They wont give you a refund. You already
broke the seal on the shrink wrap."

"Plus, you took it out of the
jacket," said another.

I asked how you could tell the record was
defective unless you broke the seal and took it out of the
jacket. Shrugs. "Thats how The Man puts it to
you," said one font of wisdom.

Since I didnt understand the protocols of
returning a defective item, I was hesitant about it anyway, but I
liked the record and I wanted a good copy so I continued asking
how to go about it. What if they asked this, what should I
say? What if they said that, what should I do? My punk
friends from the street corner smelled blood, and perhaps with a
few winks and nudges I missed while staring at the motionless
album cover, they agreed to return with me to the store the next
day. "Well cover your back," they said.

What they really did was call a friend of
theirs who was the assistant manager at the Melody Hut and set me
up but good. When we arrived at the store, said friend was behind
the returns desk and proceeded to enact every
nightmare situation I had discussed with my buddies the day
before

"What are you trying to pull here? You
didnt buy this here. We dont sell this record."
I pointed to a dump bin full of them. "Wheres your
receipt? What the hell is this? Its torn!" I said it
tore because it was stapled to the bag and I couldnt get it
open without tearing the receipt. "You dont own a
staple remover? Plenty of time to come back here and stir up
trouble, but no time for a staple remover. Well, we dont
accept torn up receipts. Ill have to get the manager. Why
are you returning it?" It sticks. "Let me guess. Is it
Song Four, side one?" Why yes, it is. "It doesn't
stick! Thats the way they recorded it, its joke,
unless youre too much of a Mongoloid idiot to get it.
Unlessyou didnt push the needle then, did
you?" Well, yes... "Well, now it sticks!! God,
you tear up the receipt, you admit you pushed the needle
and ruined the album, and were supposed to go, Ooooh,
poor baby! His weckod is awwwww bwoken! Wet US give you Bwand new
one! Here! Take it, you friggin Goo-goo!!
People like you make me sick!! Enjoy your record, sonny, but
lemme tell you this: You are now on THE LIST. Im
sending your name to every record store in New Jersey and if you
try to pull this garbage again, thats it! No more Mister
Nice Guy!"

All my worst fears were confirmed. I was a
basket case for days. Well, maybe days is the wrong
way to put it, because that was about 35 years ago and Im
still a basket case. Eventually my friends confessed but it
didnt make any difference. I knew I was still on The List.

IF THE SHOE FITS

I was sitting in my cubicle comparing the list
of potential jurors with the list of convicted felons and
crossing anyone I found on the latter list off the former list.
This is what I did all day, every day, during the summer that I
worked for the Passaic County ID Bureau, and it was mighty dull.
I paused for a moment, wondering whether Mitchell Maynard
Grizwald (list one) was the same person as Mitch Maynard Grizwald
(list two) when the head of the ID Bureau slapped his palm
against the side of my cubicle and said: "Got a TaNojoDe,
pal." I drew a line through one of the Grizwalds, either
knocking him off jury duty or expunging his criminal record, and
grabbed my coat. A TaNojoDe!

TaNoJoDe-- which is pronounced tah-NOJ-oh-dee--
was a quasi-acronym for Task Not on Job Description.
A TaNoJoDe could be anything: it might mean I was picking up a
lunch order from the deli, it might mean I was photographing an
autopsy because the regular autopsy photographer was too
hung-over to operate the camera properly. A few times I had been
assigned to draw pictures of cockroaches on an overhead projector
transparency for a lecture the boss was giving (the summer I was
there, he gave at least three lectures about cockroaches; I have
no idea why, or to whom, but he said "These are great! You
were born to draw cockroaches, kid," and he bought me lunch
every time (Hot Texas Wieners! Yum!), so what the heck).
Occasionally my TaNoJoDe had been something really cool, such as
trying to stuff a body, recovered recently after spending two or
three weeks in the Passaic River, into a body bag.

Today it was a very low-key TaNoJoDe. "Get
this baby down to Doctor Moskowitz," he said. 'This baby'
was a shoe, actually a heavy-duty work boot with a reinforced
steel toe; it was sealed inside a plastic bag. "I don't know
what the hell they sent it here for. Should have gone right to
Moskowitz. Tell him they want to see the report on this Ay Ess Ay
Pee." I nodded, picked up the shoe. Even heavier than it
looked. "Then get yourself some grub. Here." He gave me
a chit for lunch in the cafeteria. This was not as good as giving
me 5 bucks for Hot Texas Wieners at the Falls View Grill, but
then I was just bringing a shoe to the lab, not something, you
know, gross. "I'm counting on you, kid," he said. He
always said that.

I took the scenic route to the lab-- through
the sub basement, past the holding tanks, through the little room
where I was sometimes allowed to fingerprint and photograph
recidivists, past the soda machine which the trustees
deliberately mis-stocked so that you got some crappy generic
orange soda no matter which button you pushed, and into the
little tangle of offices where the coroner and his crew worked.
There was a sign on Dr. Moskowitz's door: "Lunch. Back
soon." I hollered "Yo! Shoe! Anybody here?" But
there was no answer. I thought of just leaving the shoe by the
door, but decided against it. I strolled down the corridor
towards the caf, jauntily swinging the bag full of shoe.

The day's menu was meatloaf. The day's menu was
always meatloaf. I traded my chit for a couple of slabs and sat
down, and placed the shoe on the table next to my plate.

"You're a better man than I am," said
the cop at the next table.

"Huh?"

"I wouldn't put that thing on the table
when I was eating. I was there when they recovered it."

I grunted and shrugged. Everybody at the ID
Bureau spent at least 5 minutes a day trying to gross me out. It
was always 'See that coffee mug you're drinkin' out of? Correy
ran out of specimen jars an' used THAT MUG to send A BRAIN to the
lab this morning.' So I didn't even bother to ask what the story
was with the shoe.

"I don't even want that thing on the table
next to my table when I'm eating," said the guy next to the
cop. He got up and actually left the room, leaving a half-eaten
slice of pie on his plate.

"Shouldn't that thing be in the lab?"
said the cop.

"Out to lunch," I said.

"Well, Geez, I can't believe you brought
it in HERE."

"Okay," I sighed, "Where did you
find it?"

"Route 46, near the McBride Avenue
turn-off."

"So?"

"So nothing," he said, helping
himself to the abandoned pie. "What's the difference where
we found it?"

I was now thoroughly confused. "Well,
what's the big deal? Why do they want to even bother to check
this thing out?"

He almost spit out the pie. He coughed, patted
his mouth with a napkin, swallowed. "Well, hey, chief, don't
you think we ought to? I mean, aren't you a little curious about
where it came from and how it got there?"

"No."

"Tough guy," he said, shaking his
head.

"I see these things all the time," I
said.

"Yeah?"

"I mean, sure, you wonder what the story
is, you know, like, where's the other one, but who cares?"

"Who cares," he said, smiling.
"You are something."

"You know what I wonder?" I went on.
"You ever see, like, a pair of sneakers tied together and
hanging from a telephone line?"

"Sure."

"Well," I said, "What's the
story with THAT?"

He stared at me. "Kid," he said,
"You really ought to get that thing to the lab."

I finished my lunch and went back down to the
coroner's office, and now Dr. Moskowitz had returned.
"Ah," he said, "I've been expecting this."

"What's the big deal?" I said.
"Do they think this shoe is a clue or something?"

"A clue???"

"Well, I mean, why are they... why did
they even bring it in? Do they think it belongs to some, like,
missing person or something?"

Usually I dont instigate the interviews
that I conduct with my daughter Emma for publication. She calls
me because shes got something very compelling to
express to my lucky readers. But this time I made the phone call.
Id discovered, by reading her blog, that she had just hosted her fourth annual "We
Still Believe You, Winona" movie marathon and I wanted to
get the inside scoop. Marathon Attendee "Maximillian"
also participated in the interviewed, thanks to the miracle of
"three-way calling," which I didnt know I had
until my daughter said "What do you think the
link button youve had on your phone for 15
years is for?" Live and learn, huh?

The Winona in question is Winona Ryder, and the
festival is held on her birthday. The 'we still believe you'
refers to Miss Ryder's declaration of innocence following her
arrest for shoplifting some years ago. Although surveillance
cameras documented the incident, my daughter has steadfastly
refused to entertain the possibility of Miss Ryder's guilt. This
refusal may be a genetic trait; my mother, for instance, insisted
that O.J. couldn't possibly have committed murder because he was
too good-looking.

On the other hand, the last conversation I had
with my mother-- she was literally on her death bed-- went more
or less like this:

MOM: He killed her, you know.

ME: Who?

MOM: You know who. Captain Kirk. He
drowned her, the fat bastard!

My mother was sure that William Shatner had
murdered his wife. This suspicion, so far as I can ascertain, has
never been expressed by anyone else on the face of the earth. My
mother could never forgive Mr. Shatner for 'letting himself go.'

In any event, I began the interview by
addressing the belief issue.

ME: You call this the We Still Believe
You Winona Marathon...

EMMA: Yes. She was FRAMED.

ME: But I couldnt help noticing that when
you wrote about it on your blog, you headlined it "Klepto of
My Heart."

EMMA: Um...

ME: It seems to me...

EMMA: I dont like where this is going...

ME: ...That if you think shes a klepto,
you dont believe she was framed.

EMMA: Uh...

ME: Maximillian, do you believe Winona was
framed?

MAXIMILIIAN: No, of course not. Nobody but Emma
believes that. Ive seen the security tape. Everybodys
seen the security tape.

EMMA: THE TAPE WAS DOCTORED!

ME: So which movies did you show this year?

EMMA: House of the Spirits,
Little Women, Mermaids, and
Dracula. When Michelle was renting them at Kims
Video, the girl at the counter said, "Are you renting these
because its Winonas birthday?" I mean, that just
shows you.

ME: Shows you what?

EMMA: That the girl at Kims was aware
that it was Winonas 34th birthday.

ME: Ah.

EMMA: Meryl Streep makes out with Glenn
Close in 'House of the Spirits.' Mermaids is the
greatestONE of the greatest movies of all time. Winona
loses her virginity in a church tower.

MAXIMILLIAN: It was an awful movie.

EMMA: No it wasn't. And when she looses her
cherry she makes this incredible sound, like
"hhhhuuuhhnnn!!"

MAXIMILLIAN: That's pretty accurate. Although
you did it exhaling, and she did it on the inhale.

ME: 'Hhhhuuuhhnnn?'

EMMA: Please. Don't even try. Inna got very
violent at Maximillian because he said he...

MAXIMILLIAN: Well, I live on East 2nd
Street and I said I live below Houston. Inna started yelling.
"Houston is ZERO! Houston is ZERO!"

ME: Thats true, sort of. But I cant
see getting angry about it.

EMMA: Im thinking. Who else was
there? There were these two soulless people from my Italian
class.

ME: Souless? In what sense?

EMMA: In the sense that they were devoid of
soul. One of them asked me if I knew what she was going to be for
Halloween and I said, a hooker? and she said,
NO! Little Red Riding Hootch. I mean excuse me, but
how was I wrong? I mean whats the difference?

ME: Whats a hootch?

EMMA: Its a hooker. They hate Inna. They
thought she was being mean. She wasnt being mean. She was
just cold and sullen because shes Russian. Devra brought
her mustache over and we were...

ME: Wait. Youre kind of jumping around.
Mustache?

EMMA: Yes. We were both Vanzetti for the
marathon.

ME: Ah. I forgot. You and Devra are going to be
Sacco and Vanzetti for the Halloween parade this year.

ME: Very authentic. What are you going to be on
Halloween, Maximillian?

MAXIMILLIAN: Im gong to be the Mad Hatter
and my girl friend Ari is going to be Alice. I...

EMMA: AHEM. Excuse me. Back to me.
It was decided in March that Devra and I were going to be Sacco
and Vanzetti. Only Vanzetti has the mustache, though, so we
considered both being Vanzetti? And we had a cake.

ME: A Sacco and Vanzetti cake?

EMMA: No, we are back to Winona. Keep up. The
cake said "Winona 4 Eva," and I drew a line through the
na so it said Wino 4 Eva.

ME: I dont understand.

EMMA: It was a tribute to Johnny Depp.

ME: Oh right, the Winona Forever
tattoo he had. Did he spell it like that, 4 Eva?

EMMA: No, but he did get the na
removed. I couldnt spell the whole thing out because there
wasnt enough space.

ME: Please. You had a whole cake. He fit it on
his arm.

EMMA: He was using a needle. I had this big
clunky squirty thingee with icing in it.

ME: Wait, let me get that... Big
clunky... squirty...

EMMA: I begin to be annoyed. Write this:
"Hanson is hot, but their music isnt."

ME: Hanson...?

EMMA: The BAND. Devra got us free ticket to the
Hanson documentary and there was a Q & A after with the band
itselfthemselfwith...

ME: The Mmmm-bop Hanson?

EMMA: It was all like ooh the record
industry is so corrupt and it took us so long to get our third
album out and... Oh, wait, Maximillian, my dad BOUGHT
Mmmm-bop because he saw them on MTV and he thought
the chick in the middle is really cute. True.

ME: Well... yeah...

EMMA: I mean, who can blame him? Anyway they
gave out copies of the new CD and its all acoustic-y and
dull but they look really hot now? And then we went to KFC and we
hear somebody yell Go Tay! and what that was is the
other guys telling Taylor to get a cab? Anyway, they look hot.
Taylor looks like Chelsea Clinton now. Hes like buzzed his
head? Taylor is holding the torch of hotness. But I mean they
were complaining about Tiger Beat.

MAXIMILLIAN: Whats Tiger Beat?

EMMA: A Teen Fan Magazine. They did a lot of
stories about Jonathan Taylor Thomas, before he got all gross.
Somebody wrote in and said they had 25 posters of JJT and then I
got 26. Deliberately. Remember, dad?

ME: Alas yes.

EMMA: I want to finish this up with some
general Winona observations but first I just want to say that it
is perfect that the disgusting Anaheim Rally Monkey is named Katie...

ME: The Rally Monkey...

EMMA: Remember I bought the Rally Monkey
t-shirt and it made me break out? That was intentional on the
part of the disgusting rally monkey!

ME: Didnt you buy that on eBay?

EMMA: Yesfrom RALLYMONKEY.COM! And
its named "Katie" just like Katie Holmes, which
in my view is totally appropriate. During the play-offs the rally
monkey came on and I screamed and Mal woke up. Then we watched
that episode of "Dawsons Creek," it was so sad,
the one where Michelle Williams says, "And I can take all
the jerks in the world climbing out of my bedroom window, but
when Dawson Leery does it, it better be for me." SWOON.

ME: What??

EMMA: What what?

ME: What does that mean?

EMMA: It is so beautiful!

ME: It doesnt even make sense. Its
like a randomly generated words with some random punctuation
thrown in.

EMMA: You dont get it.

ME: I...

EMMA: Put "get" in quotations.

ME: Will do.

EMMA: Winona is making a HUGE COMEBACKall
capitals, thank youin March. Shes got two movies and
its just a supporting role in one, but she will win the
Oscar™ for the other one, 'A Scanner Darkly.'

MAXIMILLIAN: Did you see preview for 'V for
Vendetta?' Natalie Portmans shaved head? It looks
ridiculous.

EMMA: NO!

MAXIMILLIAN: The head, I mean, not the movie.

EMMA: Oh. Well, yes. And Instead of going to my
Socialist Theory class (because theyre all commies), I go
to the dog run. Theres a French bulldog (black and white
spotted) named Stella. When they want the dog to come they yell
"STELLA!" like Marlon Brando in "Streetcar."

ME: I... Uh...

EMMA: What?

ME: Im not sure. You made my brain
completely stop working for a second.

Picarillo had been on a diet all summer. As far
as Calvano and I could tell he was eating exactly the same food
in exactly the same amounts as always, but in addition he was now
drinking about a case of diet soda every day. Modern diet sodas,
if anything, taste too sweet; diet sodas in the mid-sixties
tasted like someone had put a cigarette out in the can. Brake
fluid tasted better. Used brake fluid tasted better. And
Picarillo was swilling it down by the gallon.

The only thing was, he didnt appear to be
losing any weight. He looked no different in mid October than he
had when hed begun this brutal regimen back in late May. Of
course his mother insisted that he was now almost unrecognizably
svelte. "Michaelyou look so handsome!" she would
announce 5 or 6 times a day.

"How much has he lost?" asked
Calvano.

"Seven pounds," she said. Seven
invisible pounds. Later it turned out that the Picarillo family
scale had been * cough * recalibrated manually, and that
Picarillo had actually lost a pound and a half during his
grueling 5 month ordeal, but in mid October his mother was still
convinced that her son was imperially slim. This may be why she
agreed to his proposed Halloween costume.

Tarzan.

At this time there was a Tarzan TV show in
prime time, starring one Ron Ely, and as he was the Tarzan de
jour, Picarillo used him as the template for his own Tarzanning,
at least as far as his mother would permit. Like many cinematic
Tarzans, Ron Ely what appeared to be a pair of leopard skin
briefs, the better to display his impressive abdominals.
Picarillos abdominals were impressive too, but in a
different way, and Picarillo acceded to his mothers
suggested substitution of the more modest over-the-shoulder
leopard skin outfit.

Mr. Ely also sported longish blonde hair, not
hippie length, exactly, and perfectly acceptable for swinging
around in the jungle. Picarillo sported a butch cuta
modified crew cut with a slightly longer crop of hair at the very
front, like a tiny duck blind. This was kept upright and spiffy
with a tube of Butch Wax. As there was (probably) no Butch Wax to
be had in the jungle, Picarillo felt it wouldnt do. There
was no time to allow a Tarzan-like crop of wavy blonde hair to
grow in, so he prevailed upon his mother to find him a suitable
wig.

"Well, I dont know," mused Mrs.
P. She absently breaded a pound of calamari while she mused.
"I think your Aunt Angelica has an old blonde wig... maybe
we could do something with that..."

"Call her!" cried Picarillo.

Calvano and I could scarcely conceal our
delight. Wed been backing up Picarillo all the way, even
though his Tarzan idea went against our "Only Monsters On
Halloween" policy. The idea of Picarillo trick or treating
in a blonde wig was just too good to be true.

Picarillo modeled his costume for us four or
five days before Halloween. Thanks to his diet and non-exercise
routine, he was as completely pear shaped as ever. The Tarzan
outfit his mother had concocted looked amazingly like an old
yellow one-piece bathing suit augmented with some hand-drawn
spots. Aunt Angelicas blonde wig looked just the way
youd expect Aunt Angelicas blonde wig to look.
Wed never seen anything like this before, and we
wouldnt see anything like it again until the early
1970s when "Female Trouble," starring the 200
pound transvestite Divine, played at the Willowbrook Cinema.

"Wow," I said. "You look exactly
like Tarzan, Picarillo."

"Yeah," said Calvano. "Hey, you
know what you should use for your trick or treat bag? My
uncles leather ammo bag. He took it on all his African
safaris."

"Whoa!" said Picarillo. "You
guys are the best!"

"No," I said, "You are the
best!"

On Halloween things worked out even better than
wed anticipated. The temperature hovered between 40 and 45
degrees all day and began to drop just about the time we were
heading out. Picarillo was so cold he barely noticed how much
Calvanos uncles leather ammo bag resembled a purse.
The folks in the first houses we hit on Prospect Street stared at
Picarillo with undisguised amazement. "What the hell is
this?" asked Mr. Mullen.

"Its me, Mike!" cried
Picarillo, pulling off his wig.

"Hababababa," said Mr. Mullen. He
shut the door on us without giving us any candy.

"Im freezing, you guys," he
said as we trudged on to the next house. Calvano and I were quite
comfortable in our jackets and werewolf masks. (In fact, I was
especially warm since it was my turn to wear the deluxe
over-the-head werewolf mask that year).

"Well see what we can do," said
Calvano. "Maybe... hey, lets skip this house and go
right to Miss Hoonhauts." She was the librarian and
our theory was that people are always leaving coats and jackets
at the library, so shed be able to help Picarillo out.

"My goodness," she said when she
opened the door. "You poor girlyou must be
frozen."

"Its Picarillo, Miz Hoonhaut,"
I said.

"Picarillo!" she said. "Merciful
heavens! I cant believe your mother let you go out like
that."

"The wig was her idea," said Calvano.

"I dont mean the costume. I mean not
making you wear a coat. It must be 30 degrees out!"

"Im Tarzan," Picarillo
explained.

Miss Hoonhaut opened her mouth to say
something, but changed her mind.

"Tarzan doesnt wear coats,"
Calvano explained. "But I think maybe it would be a good
idea."

"Why does he have that purse?" she
asked.

"Its an ammo bag," said
Picarillo.

"Nonsense. I have the same one. Its
from Gimbles." We stood in her living room and looked
at her knickknacks while she rummaged through the closet.
"Here," she said. "This will keep you nice and
warm."

Since Miss Hoonhaut was what they used to call
a maiden lady, she of course had no mens outerwear in her
closet. She draped a large old coat with a fur collar around
Picarillo. "This isnt the kind of a coat Tarzan would
wear," he pouted.

"Sure it is," said Calvano.
"Its got some kind of, like, jungle animal fur around
the collar. Look, when you get inside somebodys house, you
just throw open the coat and do the Tarzan yell. You havent
been doing the Tarzan yell."

Calvano and I profusely thanked Miss Hoonhaut
and we continued on our rounds.

We convinced Picarillo to essay the Tarzan yell
at the next house. I dont think Ill ever forget the
look on Dr. Fergussons face when Picarillo threw open the
coat, clutched his purse, and cried "Wugga wugga
wugga!" By now it was too cold for Picarillo, even with Miss
Hoonhauts coat, so we walked him back home.

Picarillo wanted to change into his street
clothes but we wouldnt hear of it. "You should give
out candy to little kids in the Tarzan costume," suggested
Calvano. "Theyd love it. Hey, you could even wear my
Uncles ammo belt!"

"Whoa! An ammo belt!"

"Yee-ah," said Calvano. "I
brought it over before... I, uh, gave it to your sister.
Wheres Noreen?" Calvano carried on a brief, furtive
conversation with Picarillos sister Noreen, who tried
unsuccessfully to suppress some very unsisterly snorting. She ran
upstairs and returned shortly with a paper bag.

"Here, Mike," she said.
"Its Robs uncles ammo belt-thingee."

Picarillo eagerly removed it from the bag.
"It doesnt look like I figured."

"Well, its the real deal," said
Calvano.

"It looks like Noreens tutu."

"No, no," said Calvano. But it was
one accessory too much.

"Do you think Im stupid?" said
Picarillo. "Im not gonna wear this! Forget it!
Id look like a fool!" He tossed the tutu aside, fixed
the strap on his over the shoulder bathing suit, adjusted his
wig, picked up his purse, and prepared to greet the first
trick-or-treater.

I was going to present an exciting account of
the Community Day bed race that was held on Bridge Street in
Milford this past weekend, but I had a problem with a pig.

The pig in question was being roasted outside
the Milford Market. It was looking very dapper and
devil-may-care, as only a pig with an apple in its mouth can. Now
I wonder why is it, I said to myself, that this roasted pig can
look so suave, while I, who am the pigs equal or better in
terms of erudition and general sophistication, look like the sort
of fellow seen on "Cops" without a shirt, trying to
convince the arresting officers that he has no idea how his
pick-up truck ended up in that there swimming pool. At least
thats how I look in the official photos that ornament this
column.

It occurred to me that I might have my picture
taken with the pig and perhaps in that manner appropriate some of
the pigs glamour for myself. Maybe my arm around the pig,
and our faces literally cheek-by-jowl. I looked around for one of
the DVN photographers but to no avail, so I popped a roll of film
into my own camera and enlisted my friend Curt to do the honors.

"Yes," he agreed, "thats
certainly a fine looking pig." By this time the idea for the
photo was becoming more distinct in my mind. Maybe the caption
could say something like "Columnist Grimshaw (left) and
friend." "Hey," said Curt, "Maybe you should
both have apples in your mouths."

There was definitely something to be said for
that, I decided. A little of the common touch. On the other hand,
another possibility for the caption Id been considering was
"Grimshaw and friend (with apple)" or alternatively,
"Grimshaw (without apple) and friend," and if both the
pig and I had apples in our mouths that would effectively kill
the joke. Really, you have no idea how difficult this humor stuff
is. I explained the problem to Curt.

"Well, how about this then? You could be
biting the same apple as the pig, like you both dove for it at
the same time. You could kind of glare at each other." Since
the pigs eyes had been replaced by a pair of cherries I
would have to do the glaring for both of us. But the issue was
moot because I had no intention of biting the same apple as the
pig. This is the problem with 90% of the suggestions I get from
my readers, or 90% of the suggestions that dont involve
rolling donuts, anyway. I want to do something witty and subtle
(like posing next to a pig with an apple in its mouth), and they
want me to rip the apple out of the pigs mouth with my
teeth. I politely declined.

"Why do they put the apple in the
pigs mouth anyway?" asked Curt. I said I didnt
know. "Does somebody eat it? Is it some kind of a delicacy
after its been roasted in a pigs mouth?" I
repeated that I didnt know. I volunteered that I had never
seen anyone eat the apple from the pigs mouth but that
didnt mean it didnt happen. I suggested to Curt that
he ask the gentleman carving sandwiches from the haunch of the
pig. "Nah," said Curt. "Look. Lets say there
was a live pig and it was eating an apple. Okay?" I agreed
that it could happen, and probably had. "Well, would you
swipe the apple out of the pigs mouth and eat it?" I
said that I would not. It might upset the pig. "Even if it
wouldnt upset the pig, you wouldnt do it, because
its gross. Now thats a live pig. Lets talk dead
pigs for a minute." I said okay, lets talk dead pigs
for a minute. I glanced at my watch. "Im not talking
some road kill-type pig, on day three after the Buick nailed it.
Lets go back to the live pig that was eating the apple. It
hasnt eaten the apple yet, though. Lets say it sees
an apple, starts eating it, and drops dead."

What was the cause of death, I asked, because I
had a pretty fair idea of where Curt was going with this.
"Not the apple. Nothing to do with the apple. Lets say
it was an embolism. The pig doesnt suffer at all. No
disease, no sickness, just perfectly healthy one minute and BOOM!
dead as a doornail the next. Well, you come by and this dead pig
has this apple in its mouth. Do you have the slightest desire to
eat that apple?" I said no, but of course I wouldnt be
aware that the pig had died of an embolism. For all I knew, it
was a poisoned apple. "Youre dancing around the issue,
dude. You would not eat an apple you found in the mouth of a dead
pig no matter what. True?" I had to admit it was true.
"Well, yonder apple is in the mouth of a dead pig and
Im betting nobodys going to eat it." I said I
would not take that bet. I also pointed out that Curt had brought
up the subject himself and even though it sounded like he was
arguing with me, I had taken no position on the
apple-in-the-mouth-of-the-roasted-pig issue. Curt did not dispute
this. "It might not even be an eating apple," he said.
"It could be a cooking apple. Why waste an eating apple in a
dead pigs mouth?"

I said lets take the picture. Ill
just crouch next to the pig, I said. Should I have an apple in my
mouth or not? All in favor raise your right hand.

Curt raised his right hand. So did the pig.

Actually, I realized a couple of seconds later,
the wind had just lifted some of the aluminum foil around the pig
and he didnt really raise his right hand, or paw, or
whatever you call it. But by the time I realized that the pig
hadnt really voted in favor of my having the apple in my
mouth it was too late and I had to go home and change my
underwear. And thats why I can not give you any details
about the bed race, but Im sure you can find the details
elsewhere in the paper. I dont know what happened to the
apple, either, and if its all the same to you Id like
to keep it that way.

Pumpkins for Columbus

The Custom Neon Sign Shop had been open for
business only two weeks and I had not quite mastered some of the
technical aspects of making neon signs, such as shaping the glass
tubes into letters, getting the neon gas into those tubes, and
running an electrical current through the gas to make it glow. It
might have made sense to delay our Grand Opening until I had
mastered these technical aspects. But that would have
necessitated a delay of well over 25 years since the sad fact is
that well over 25 years have passed since then and I never quite
mastered those technical aspects. Thats why so many of our
signs exploded when they were plugged in.

I was sitting at my desk ruining another glass
tube. I could make a pretty fair "C," a reasonable
"J," a very respectable "L," and my
"U" and "V" were competent. It goes without
saying that my "I" was perfection. But there was no
word in the English language that could be assembled from these
letters, unless you count "LUV," and since I was not a
14 year old girl I did not. Another attempted "A"
snapped into three pieces, and Mulberry Street Joey Clams entered
the shop with a milk crate full of tiny pumpkins.

"Very cute," I said. It was early
October and I assumed we would be dressing the shop window up
with some sort of harvest motif, or perhaps a Halloween scene.

"If you can figure out how to make a
letter a day, in a week were ready to rock and roll,"
said Mulberry Street Joey Clams. He lined up his pumpkins on the
desk, placing the larger, softball sized pumpkins at one end and
the scrawny tennis-ball sized pumpkins at the other.

"I can make 6 letters now," I said.
"A letter a day for a week is seven letters, and together
thats 13. Rumor has it theyve added a few more
letters recently."

"Yeah, but I dont know if you ever
picked this up, but I noticed recently a lot of the letters
dont do anything. Like C, sometimes it sounds
like S, sometimes like a K. Sometimes
they even stick it right in front of the K so it
doesnt sound like nothing. Its not even a real letter
if you ask me. Its got this real cushy spot right up at the
front of the alphabet but it does nothing. Its
somebodys brother-in-law, you know what Im
saying?" He made some adjustments in the row of tiny
pumpkins.

"Yuh."

"C never sounds like
C. Its nuts."

"Well, cease, the
C actually does sound like a C
there."

Mulberry Street Joey Clams stopped playing with
the pumpkins for a moment while he considered this.
"Thats true," he said at last. "Huh. Also,
the C in sequins sounds like
C, now that you mention it."

"Sequins?"

"Yeah, its that sparkly stuff
strippers glue on their boobs."

"Ah."

"But thats just two words out of
literally hundreds. Ditch the letter C."

"I can make a C already,
though."

Mulberry Street Joey Clams sighed. "Well,
whats done is done. But like T and
D, for instance, just figure out one or the
other."

"One or the other."

"Its practically the same thing, you
know? In this neighborhood especially. Some people say
Tanks, some people say Danks. Did you
ever notice that?"

"Yes. Yes I did."

"You know, now that I think of it, maybe
you got the right idea with this C business after
all. I mean, it works for S and K, why
not use it for both of those, and forget about the actual
S and K?"

"Well, for one thing, sick
would be spelled c-i-c. And so would
kick. So would kiss. So would
Sis."

"Im sure you got a point there some
place..."

"Some people might find it
confusing," I suggested.

"Yeah, well, some people find a lot of
things confusing," said Mulberry Street Joey Clams, in such
a way that I got the impression he felt I might just be one of
those people myself. "Anyway, we can work out which letters
stay and which ones go later. You can make an I,
right?"

"Yes. A world class I."

"Youll notice I got this whole bunch
of little pumpkins here? And Halloween is coming. Now heres
the plan. You make an I. Which you can already do. We
figure out how to get the neon inside, and then we run it off
like a D cell or something. You following me?"

"The letter I. We power it
with a D cell."

"Right, if thatll work. If not, we
can wire it like a lamp and run it out of a wall socket.
Right?"

"I think that would work. Maybe both ways
would work," I said. "So were just selling the
letter I? Im thinking there might be a limited
demand."

"You are the mayor of Miss-The-Point City.
You see these pumpkins? I got em at that Korean vegetable
stand on Kenmore Street for almost nothing. The letter
I is a neon candle, get it? We carve these into Jack
OLanterns and we stick the neon candle inside, and you got
a Jack olantern with a candle that never burns out and
dont stink up the whole place and cant set the house
on fire."

"Its a pretty good idea, Mulberry
Street Joey Clams, but these pumpkins are so tiny I dont
think we could carve a face that looks like a face in any of
them. And if we did, the *cough* neon candle would have to be
less than an inch high. I definitely cant do that."

"You kill me. These are baby pumpkins. We
dont carve them until theyre like the size of a
basketball."

"Did the guy at the Korean vegetable stand
tell you these were going to grow to the size of a
basketball?"

"Nah, he speaks like 10 words of English.
Hey, college boy, Ive SEEN pumpkins before. I know how big
they get."

"Uh-huh."

"Its like bananas. You buy them when
theyre green, and then they get yellow and then you eat
them. Same deal here. Only instead of yellow, we want big."

"They keep getting bigger until you pick
them off the vine, Mulberry Street Joey Clams. Then they
dont get any bigger."

"For true?"

"I swear."

He was silent for several minutes. "What
about if we stick them in a pan of water?"

"We could do that."

He was silent for several more minutes.
"Well, okay, forget the jack olanterns. What about
Columbus Day? Doesnt Columbus have something to do with
pumpkins?"

"No, Mulberry Street Joey Clams. He
discovered America."

"I know he discovered America!" He
went to the slop sink and put an inch of water in a cookie pan.
"What about pumpkins? What did he have to do with
pumpkins?" Mulberry Street Joey Clams carefully placed his
pumpkins in the cookie pan. "Think!" he cried.

We thought, and stared at our pumpkins, which
sat in an inch of water and refused to grow any bigger.

Ask the
Dishwashing Expert Guy

Dear Dishwashing Expert Guy:

How long should one allow the dishes to soak in
the sink before one commences with the actual washing?

(signed)

Hates to Rush These Things

DEAR HATES:

This is, one hardly needs to note, variable. It
depends upon the type of dish, the amount of soiling, the solvent
to be employed, and so on. In general, a moderately soiled plate
(pâté de foie gras, let us say, with an unobtrusive
garnish, and a brace of perfectly prepared asparagus spears whose
savory delights might have been better appreciated on a separate
platebut how cunning they looked, crossed oh-so-casually
(not!) beside the pâté!) should be soaked for a
minimum of one-and-a-quarter hours before any thought is given to
cleaning. And one should add ten minutes for each additional
plate deposited in the sink. At the risk of belaboring the
obvious, this initial soak should be in warm water (100 degrees
F). The water should be changed before it cools to room
temperature. In general you wont need to do this more than
three times, but in the cooler months it may be required more
frequently. Tedious? Not if you remember the result is worth it!

*

Dear Dishwashing Expert Guy:

How did our caveman ancestors wash their
dishes?

(signed)

Curious about How Our Caveman Ancestors Washed
Their Dishes

DEAR CURIOUS:

The fossil record is not entirely clear on this
point, so some of what I am about to relate is speculation, but
make no mistakeit is speculation based upon the best
scientific evidence available. In the Paleolithic period, dishes
were crudely chipped from rock, and much food debris was trapped
by the uneven and porous surface of the stone. Unless the
cave-dwelling chef happened to live near a hot spring, the dishes
were often imperfectly cleaned, and... Well, lets not dwell
on that. Experts agree that things got much better in the
Neolithic (Latin for "New Plates"), when Porcelain was
introduced to us by the space aliens.

*

Dear Dishwashing Expert Guy:

When it comes to dishwashing liquid, which is
betterthe pink, the blue, the white, or the green?

(signed)

Wants to Know Which Color Is the Best

DEAR WANTS

In the long-ago days of the Dishwashing Expert
Guys youth, there was only white and pinkan anemic
palate, perhaps, but a not-unpleasing one. Now virtually every
color of the rainbow is available for your dishwashing fluid
needs and excellent results may be obtained with any one of them,
although we suggest reserving the citrus-based orange solvents
for the industrial uses for which they were developed. These
solvents are strong enough to do serious damage to the designs on
your hand-painted flatwareand why, pray tell, would you use
any other kind of flatware?

*

DEAR DISHWASHING EXPERT GUY:

No, I mean which color dishwashing liquid is
best for killing cockroaches?

(signed)

Still Wants to Know Which Color Is Best

DEAR STILL:

Ah! To begin with, let me repeat my injunction
vis-à-vis the orange solvents. Your standard cockroach finds
them unpleasant, no mistake, and in time there may be a toxic
effect, but stay with the more traditional liquids when dealing
with Mr. Roach. The quality you want is viscositythe
thicker the better. Therefore, select your dishwashing liquid on
this basis, not color. Chose an opaque fluid. The more
translucent, the less likely it is to do the job you want done.

*

Dear Dishwashing Expert Guy:

How many dishes can be safely washed at the
same time? I would think the more dishes in the sink, the less
efficient, no?

(signed)

Needs to Know

DEAR NEEDS:

Indeed. The Dishwashing Expert Guy is willing
to soak any number of dishes in the same sink at the same time,
but when it comes to washing, the rule is: One At A Time. It is
far, far better to give each dish its own sink full of water.
Isnt this wasteful? Not as wasteful as an imperfectly clean
dish! How much time should you put aside for a total dishwashing
experience? Figure roughly 12 minutes washing per dish, plus
another two and a half minutes to pat it dry. And of course you
need to drain and refill the sink between dishesespecially
if youre dealing with an assortment of dishes requiring
multiple dishwashing fluids. But in a pinch you can do as many as
8 dishes fast n sloppy in just under two and a half
hours. Whats that I hear you say? Too much
time? Please! If you dont have the time to do the job
properly, dine in restaurants or eat off paper plates like a
serial killer.

*

DEAR DISHWASHING EXPERT GUY:

I am thinking about buying a new dishwasher.
What kind do you recommend?

(signed)

Gotta Get a New One

DEAR GOTTA:

I have read your letter several times but it
makes no sense to me. "Buy" a new dishwasher? But
slavery has been illegal for 140 years. Surely you dont
mean you want to buy an automatic dishwasher? Please! The
Dishwashing Expert Guy admits they have their place. For
instance, a friend of a friend lost three fingers on one hand and
two on the other while incorrectly using jumper cables [note from
the Jumper Cable Expert Guy: do NOT attach the ground to the
metal cap of a can of gasoline, even if you are "like 80%
sure" its "mostly empty."] Dish washing by
hand was just not an option for him; but the idea of an
able-bodied adult using a dishwasher is disgraceful. The
dishwashing expert guy is all for labor saving devices no
one is more attached to his apple corer than your
undersignedbut the automatic dishwasher eliminates the
entire raison dêtre of dishwashingbecoming One with
the dish. Without this, the whole thing becomes a mere exercise
in hygiene. Use an automatic dishwasher? Id just as soon
let a woman wash my dishes! Feh!

GETTIN
JIGGY WITH JANKY

In general I dont discuss my cultural
experiences in this spacebecause I havent actually
had anybut earlier this month I went to see Jandek.
Ive been a fan for years, but hes never performed on
the East Coast before. In fact, until last year he never
performed anywhere, although his career spans 28 years and 42
albums. Despite this incredibly low profile, his CDs have sold
literally dozens of copies. No exact figures are available
because hes also his record company, Corwood Industries.
The first time I heard Jandekit was the song "They
Told Me I Was a Fool"the hair stood up on the back of
my neck. There was no melody, the guitar was tuned to some key
incomprehensible to human ears, the strings were struck at
seemingly random intervals, the lyrics were simultaneously creepy
and nonsensical, and the vocals... Well, suffice to say he
doesnt sound like anybody else, and its probably a
mistake to play Jandek for anybody who isnt thoroughly
prepared. I had his second album on not long ago when my ex-wife
dropped by. She started talking but the intro to a song just
froze her in mid-sentence for a few beats and she said,
"What is wrong with you??"

The fact is, I dont know whats
wrong with me, but I have 26 Jandek albums so it must be
something fairly serious. As soon as tickets became available I
scooped up a pair. When you have a girl friend you tend to always
buy tickets in pairs, but this becomes problematic when Jandek is
involved.

My girl friend did not attend the Jandek
concert with me. She was given the option but wisely asked to
hear some Jandek first. We got 8 seconds into "They Told Me
I Was a Fool" before she said, "Youre on your
own," and turned off the CD player. I dont think
hed even started singing. "He sounds a lot different
in concert, I hear," I said, but I didnt press it.

So the extra ticket went to my friend Irwin
Chusid. I first learned about Jandek in Irwins "Songs
in the Key of Z" book, so it was only fitting. On the other
hand, as readers of that book are aware, Irwin has little regard
for Jandek's music, and ridicules it mercilessly. Many of the
folks in the Jandek fan club react to the mention of Irwins
name the way that the guy on the Abbott and Costello show used to
react to the mention of Niagara Falls, but then many of them
first became aware of Jandek through Irwin, so theres a
degree of ambivalence about him that there might not be for
someone else who compared Jandeks music to a
muttering sleepwalker aimlessly plucking amplified bicycle
spokes in print. Still, I was kind of hoping nobody would
recognize him.

I parked in Sohoa fair hike from the
Anthology Film Archives but theres free street parking on
some of the side streets as early as 5 PM. I was about three
steps out of my car when I nearly walked right into Kirsten
Dunst, lookingwelllike a movie star: that is, she was
not in the frumpy non-celeb drag she wears all the time on Page
Six or in The National Enquirer, but in a white sun dress so
plain and simple that Im sure it cost more than the car
Id just parked. We briefly made eye contact, she glanced
down at my sneakers (Converse Chuck Taylor All-Star Goths, black
with black rubber trim and laces), and that was that, although
for the next couple of blocks we were having a terrific imaginary
conversation in my head, and I like to think, in hers. In fact,
as I got further away I realized she had given me that
unmistakable "Ah, if only I had been born 30 years
earlier" look that so many beautiful young movie stars give
me when we meet. Sometimes girls give me that look at the gym,
too, but they usually spoil the moment by asking me if I ever
thought about shaving my shoulders.

The line was already 50 or 60 people long when
I got to the venue. As it happened, the doors didnt open
for another 2 hours, nearly an hour after the concert was
scheduled to begin. I must say the crowd remained remarkably high
spirited and good humored during the endless delay, even when
Irwin was saying that Jandeks entire career was the
worlds longest and most elaborate conceptual art piece.
Around 8, the line started to move. Irwin asked one of the
Anthology people why the long delay? "He was making sure
everything was perfect," she said. What could this possibly
mean, I wonderedI mean, a guy who reviewed Jandeks
recent Austin, Texas appearance mentioned that Jandek had paused
to tune a guitar string and commented, "He tunes his guitar.
Who knew?"

He didnt tune his guitar for the New York
gig. He flummoxed everybody and played a two-tiered keyboard, and
a bassist, a guitarist, and a drummer accompanied him.
Jandeks keyboard technique was quite similar to his
fretboard techniquethat is, like hed maybe heard
rumors about this instrument but never actually seen one
beforeand then every five minutes or so hed play
something that indicated he was a perfectly competent musician
and Id think, "Geezdoes he play that way on
purpose??" I was disappointed that Jandek was playing
keyboard instead of guitar because the Bizarro guitar tuning /
playing is my main area of Jandek interest, but I had to admit he
found some totally new ways to be unlistenable that night. And I
mean that in a GOOD way.

It turned out later that his guitarist suffered
from tinnitis, but the audience didnt know this during the
performanceall we knew was that he sat out that last 20
minutes sitting center stage with his hands over his ears while
Jandek tortured the keyboard and wailed away in his inimitable
fashion. It seemed perfectly plausible that he just couldnt
take Jandeks playing any more. Wow, I
thoughthes broken his guitar player! Best Concert
Ever!

I hadnt been paying much attention to the
lyrics, but when the lights came up, I found that Irwin had been
keeping a running total of how many times Jandek used some of his
favorite wordsempty (8), nothing (17), die (6). They
announced that there were two more acts appearing after a
15-minute intermission but

I couldnt imagine anything could top what
Id just witnessed with my eyes and ears and I left.

I was disappointed to see that Kirsten Dunst
hadnt left a note with her phone number under my windshield
wiper after all. The slender chance that she had may have kept me
sane during the last couple of songs. I didnt really think
she was going to leave her phone number, but I thought that maybe
shed ask me where I got the cool sneakers, and ask me to
leave the info with her agent or something. Possibly she did and
some neighborhood low-life swiped the note. It was a bittersweet
conclusion to the evening, but the knowledge that the Jandek
concert had been recorded and would be released soon on
DVDso I could experience it again whenever I
wanted!sustained me through the long drive home to Milford.

RINSING OFF THE
FRUIT

Years ago my friend Pashwari was a featured
performer on a cable TV kiddies show, and now from time to time
the survivors get together and perform at dinner theaters,
retirement homes, prisons, and so forth. They bill themselves as
a burlesque show, although there are no scantily
dressed females in sight, except perhaps in the audiences at the
retirement homes. What they do is baggy-pants seltzer-in-face
comedy. Pashwari not only wields a mean seltzer bottle, he is
also the gangs booking agent.

"We were booked at Mister Bs
Entertainitorium, a pretty good-sized restaurant with a
stage at one end of the dining room, and about two months before
the show hes running this big ad in the local
papersThe Uncle Maury ShowSold Out. So
we're thinking, great! We almost never sell out, and this took
about a day and a half. I called up and asked if he wanted to
book a second show.

"First lets see how this one
does, says Mr. B., who sounds like his been gargling with
gravel. I said, what do you mean, its sold out! Its
doing great. He says, So far we havent sold any
tickets. I said, huh? He says, Dont
worry, well do fine. Leave it to me. I know how to sell out
a room. I have visions of taking a pie in the face in front
of like 2 waiters and 5 bus boys. I like bus boys, dont get
me wrong, but we get a percentage of the gate and what amounts to
a benefit concert for bus boys just doesnt appeal to me.

"But a week before the showand
hes been running these sold out ads the whole
timethe place really is sold out. How did you manage? I
ask. People call up and say, you got any tickets
left? I say nah, its sold out, but leave your name
and number and if theres a cancellation Ill call. And
a couple of days later I call and say "We had a party cancel
out but heres the thing. Its a block of 8 tickets, so
you gotta buy the whole block. Call your friends. You prolly got
a lotta friends whod like Uncle Maury. Or maybe
theres some old ladies at church or kids with shunts inna
head you could bring and get a tax write off." Took three
weeks to sell out the whole room. I said, Kids with
shunts in the head?? He says, Water onna brain. They
need a shunt to relieve the pressure or they heads swell up like
a balloon. Lotta those kids dont get out much. Were
doin the Lords Work, sellin these big blocks of
tickets, believe me. Im hoping it being the
Lords work might make up for the illegal sales method, but
I have my doubts.

"Night of the show, Im stumbling
around in the basement of the place, looking for another bathroom
room, because Gordon [largest and most annoying of the
burlesquers] has digestive issues and has been in the mens
room that were supposed to be using for 45 minutes already.
Hes never in the bathroom for less than 45 minutes, and
then when he comes out its another 20 minutes before any
human with a functioning nose can go in there and live.

"Anyway, Im in the basement, and
theres Mr. B., rinsing off a table full of fruit with a
garden hose. When I say fruit, I dont mean like
whole apples or anything like that. I mean little chunks of
fruit, like you get in a cocktail. From last night,
Mr. B. explains. A lotta people, they order a Mai-Tai, they
dont eat the fruit. I said, So you just put it
in another drink? He says, I rinse it off
first. Well, couldnt somebody get sick from
this? Because Im thinking this or that little chunk
of pineapple might be on its 8th go round by now. He
says, People get sick, they never think of the fruit. They
always think a the lobster or something. Never the fruit.
This sounds like the Voice of Experience to me, and I think,
memo to self: Do Not Order The Mai-Tai.

"Well, we were using the pantry as our
dressing room, and by the time I returned to the pantry Gordon is
back among us and telling us the bus boys are huge fans of
histhey all recognize him and call him Gordo.
Doc the banjo player nudges me and says, "Gordo"
is Spanish for fat." I update my Memo to Self:
Do Not Order the Mai-Tai, Call Gordon Gordo
From Now On. Anyway, were in the pantry, and
were surrounded by all these enormous cans of food.
Institutional sizeslike a half-gallon can of tomato paste.
Were all marveling. Gordon goes out on stage to warm up the
crowd, he being the warmer-upper. Hes not too good at
ithes pretty much a Is there anybody here
from... [takes a long look at am index card] ...New
Jersey? guy, but we make him do it because it gives us an
extra few minutes to get ready without him babbling away, and
also its the only way to guarantee everybody a shot at the
bathroom before the show. I got an idea, says Doc,
and when he tells us, we agree that its really good.

"So we each put one of these monster cans
in our bags, and we do the show, and after the show were
getting dressed and Gordon says, Hey! Theres like
five cans of food in my bag!

"While you were doin the
warm-up, Mr. B. came back stage and told us to make sure we took
some of this grub. They got too much inventory.

"What a guy, said Gordon.

"So were leaving, and Doc stuck an
enormous bag of frozen shrimp under his coat. However, he poked a
hole in the bag. Were all walking to the parking lot, and
Doc is leaving a trail of frozen shrimp. Its like Hansel
and Gretel with the bread crumbs. Mr. B. goes, Hey!
Whats with the shrimp? Open up your coat! Doc has
this puzzled-but-innocent look on his face. He opens up the coat
and of course theres a bag of shrimp the size of a
Volkswagen. How did that get there? he says. And then
he gets a the-light-is-dawning expression, like you
see with bad actors in silent movies. Gordon! he
says. He was fooling around with my coat in the dressing
room! And Charlie goes, I saw him around my bag
before, and he takes out the can of tuna. He looks just
flabbergasted. All the guys start saying how now that you mention
it, Gordo was monkeying around with my bag too. So now
theres about 80 pounds of canned goods sitting in the
parking lot and everybodys got his bag open but Gordon.
Lets see your bag, Mr. Funny Man, says Mr. B.
I was set up! says Gordon. Mr. B. opens his bag and
its like we all just cant believe our eyes.

"Mr. B. says, The rest of youse can
go. You... Thats GordoStay right
here. None of us have any idea whats going to happen
to Gordon. Mr. B. is not a man to be trifled with. Although we
dont much like Gordon, I felt a little guilty, like
possibly wed gone just a little too far. I didnt want
to just leave him there totally helpless. I had to do something.

"So as I was getting into the car, I
yelled, Gordonwhatever you do, dont drink the
Mai-Tai!"

SETTLING IN

ME: Im calling to see if youre
okay. You havent called for a couple of days. I just
wondered if your bike had been stolen yet.

EMMA: Brando is fine.

ME: ???

EMMA: I named the bike Brando. Ooh,
I just re-read Contagion by Robin Cook and the main
character bikes to work every day from West 106th
Street through the Park and down Second Avenue to 23rd
and First. Its practically MY ROUTE, except Im on the
East Side and I go a lot further. Brando is yellow.

ME: The bike.

EMMA: Yes. The other Brando is dead. Speaking
of that, we have TWO HUGE MARATHONS coming up. First,
theres the 4th Annual We Still Believe You
Winnona Marathon, on her 34th birthday.

ME: The who?

EMMA: WINNONA. Winnona Ryder! We considered
having all period pieces but that would be too morose so
were going to just have twoI think House of
Spirits and Dracula, and then two lighter ones.
And this year well have a keynote speaker.

ME: A celeb?

EMMA: Yeah sure. No, but we might have tryouts
for it

ME: You might be able to get Winnona herself. I
believe shes at liberty these days.

EMMA: You are SO funny. The other marathon is
the Stud Debut Marathon. Last years we did
Marlons"The Men"Johnny
Depp"Nightmare on Elm Street," and
Arnold"Hercules in New York." This year I think
well give the ladies equal time but we can only think of
two really hot ladies in the whole history of
HollywoodNatalie Portman and Lauren Bacall.

ME: What I really called about, besides the
bike, I wanted to know if you got that hole in your door fixed.
You could stick your whole arm through that hole.

EMMA: It was perfectly round.

ME: Well, yeah. There used to be a deadbolt
lock there. You should

EMMA: I was taking a nap? And I hear the door
open and somebody comes in and OPENS MY REFRIGERATOR. So I
yelled, Hey, whats up in there? and they ran
out.

ME: GET THE HOLE IN THE DOOR FIXED!

EMMA: I did. I got a locksmith to put in a new
deadbolt. But the joke was on whoever came into my apartment
because the refrigerator was EMPTY. Ha!

ME: !!!

EMMA: The Mets won on my birthday. They almost
didnt, but then they did. Inna broke up with her boyfriend
during the 8th inning. He was crying.

ME: Is that why she broke up with him?

EMMA: No, he was crying because she broke up
with him. At that point the Mets were losing and I think that
maybe she dumped him right then just so I would have a memorable
birthday. That would make her a VERY fun friend. They sort of
only broke up for the night. Hes only going to be here
another week and then he goes back to England, so I think it was
like, well pretend were still going out.
They got locked in Shea and had to get out the fire escape exit.
Have you seen Prison Break, the TV show?

ME: No.

EMMA: Its great. I havent seen most
of my friends from high school in a while so its the next
best thing.

And I went to a special preview of An
Unfinished Life. A bear mauls Morgan Freeman and then it
mauls Robert Redford. Who is very grizzled in most of the movie.
Hes only hot now when hes grizzled.

ME: Wait a minuteisnt this a
documentary? What are Robert Redford and Morgan Freeman doing in
it?

EMMA: No, youre thinking of Grizzly
Man. Hey, I have now seen two movies with MAJOR GRIZZLIES
in the same month! That is so cool!

ME: Uh...

EMMA: Were going to get a cat. An old
one. I feel bad for the old ones. Well name him
Howard Roark after Howard Roark in The
Fountainhead. You know they have DOOGIE HOWSER on DVD but
not "Sisters?" What is WRONG with everybody?

ME: I dont know.

EMMA: Ooh, and we have a rat.

ME: Pardon?

EMMA: You know, like a mouse only bigger?

ME: Tell your super. Now. And get a trap.

EMMA: We will only get rid of him if you
promise to mention him in the article.

ME: DONE. Just get a trap and...

EMMA: Mal doesnt want to kill him. AND,
we havent named him yet.

ME: Dont name it. Its a RAT.

EMMA: I need some tickets to stuff. Kelly
Clarkson is playing soon. And Bruce Springsteen, too.

ME: On the same bill?

EMMA: This is not Heaven, so no, they are not
on the same bill. Will you buy tickets?

Sometimes, a week or so before school started,
my mother and Calvanos mother would team up for joint
back-to-school shopping.

Shopping for school supplies was not exactly
fun, but it was something you had to do, and there was no denying
that it had its pleasures: the smell of a brand new plastic
pencil pouchif thats not the 12-year-olds
equivalent of New Car Smell, I dont know what
is. And choosing your three-ring binder, maybe with a pocket
inside the front cover, and definitely with something cool on the
front a NY Giants logo was good because nobody would give
you a hard time about it, and cars were good for the same reason.
I would have preferred monsters but sometimes the older kids made
fun of you if you had a monster on your notebook, and even worse,
the artists who drew them were often perfunctory about it, even
slapdash, drawing werewolves with the fangs poking down instead
of up, for instance. You cant leave the selection of
something like that to someone else, least of all to your mother.

Shopping for school clothes was not fun at all.
It was a horrible experience with just one mother on hand; with
two, consulting and clucking and isnt that just
adorableing, it constituted cruel and unusual punishment.

Part of the problem was the school dress code.
You werent allowed to wear t-shirts or sweatshirts or
football jerseys, so there was no way out. We knew wed end
up with something gruesome. One year Victor Santella had shown up
for the first day of school in a Hawaiian shirt. Even though this
was not explicitly proscribed by the dress code, Mrs. Ruthcouff
had sent him home to change anyway. "If you want to look
like a hipster, you do it after school," she
said.

On the other hand, when my mom had forced me to
attend the first day of 6th grade wearing a Nehru
shirt ("Youre just being silly, all the boys
will be wearing them!") and Id wanted to be
sent home to change, it didnt happen. Mrs. Ruffalo had
cooed over it and made me stand in the front of the room so
everybody could see how smartly I was attired. The
Nehru shirt went really well with my crew cut, too.

As bad as the dress code for shirts was, the
dress code for pants was even worseno jeans, no chinos, and
that meant school pants. They werent like the dress pants
you had to wear to church. I dont know what the hell they
were. They were these mutant pants, either polyester or corduroy,
and tailored for maximum discomfort and dorkiness. The dorkier
they were the more likely it was that my mom was going to fall in
love with them.

Calvano and I watched with mounting horror as
our moms examined the material of the pants on the mannequin at
the entrance to the Bamburgers boys department.
"Oooh," said Mrs. Calvano, "cranberry cords!"

"If you know any prayers about clothes,
start saying them now," Calvano whispered to me. I snorted.
We thought we knew what we were in for, but we didnt have a
clue.

"You know what would be adorable?"
said my mother. "If Bobby and Jeff wore the same pants
on the first day of school, like little twins!"

"Ha-ga-ga-ga," said Calvano.
"Mom, No!"

"Oh, hush!" said Mrs. Calvano.
"Oh, that would be adorable!"

Numbly, Calvano and I tried on the cranberry
cords, and even more numbly watched as our mothers purchased a
pair for each of us.

"Its just pants," said Calvano.
"If we dont stand near each other, nobodyll
notice..."

"Now what SHIRT should they wear?" my
mother mused.

"Blue!" cried Calvano. He poked me in
the stomach with his elbow. "Say something besides blue, you
idiot."

"Stripes!" I said.

"Blue stripes," murmured Mrs.
Calvano.

"This cant be happening," said
Calvano. "I must be dreaming." He slapped himself in
the face but the bag with the cranberry cords was still there.

"Thats so sweet," said Mrs.
Calvano. "Hes so happy he thinks hes
dreaming!" The horrible blue striped shirts were folded up
and bagged while Bamburgers seemed to spin and distort around us,
like the bad special effects in a Health Class documentary about
drug abuse.

Our only hope was to get Picarillo to wear
something even more horrible than our cranberry cords. This was
not out of the question. Unlike us, Picarillo loved his school
clothes. He was flushed with delight when his mother told him how
handsome he looked in some pleated atrocity.

The plan was to convince Picarillo that his
most grotesque pantsthe famous Saint Patricks Day
pants, emerald green, with, I swear, shamrock patches on the
kneeswere the only pants worthy of the first day of school.
"Geez," said Picarillo, "I really like those
pants. I thought you guys thought they were stupid."

"No, no, theyre great," said
Calvano. We heard Mrs. Picarillo puttering around in the hall
with the duster so Calvano kicked the door open a little wider to
make sure she heard everything. "Those green pants, those
are the nicest pants I ever saw, Mike. Honest. I was telling
Jeff, boy I wish I had pants like that."

"Theyre really St. Patricks
Day pants. They have those Irish flowers on the
knees."

"Thats the best part. Youd be
making a big mistake not to wear those on the first day of
school, all right." Calvano continued in this vein for quite
a while, his voice sometimes shaking with suppressed emotion.
When it was over, we had no idea whether we had succeeded. We
were conscious that our fate was in Picarillos hands.

When I got to Calvanos house the morning
of the first day of schoolwearing, of course, my cranberry
cords and my blue striped shirtI was staggered by what I
saw.

Calvano had awakened to discover that after
hed gone to bed, Mrs. Picarillo had brought over the green
pants hed admired so much, and his own mother had stayed up
till 12:30 taking them in so he could wear them. Shed done
her best, but Picarillo was equal to about two and a half
Calvanos and the Shamrocks on the knees seemed even more enormous
now. Calvano was literally speechless as we walked to school.

It would be churlish of me to report the
general reaction to Calvanos pants in any detail, but I
think its fair to say that my cranberry cords received no
attention whatsoever.

[Note to readers: The Daylight Savings Time
Expert Guy has not been heard from in quite a whilenot
since April 0f 2000!as the b on his computer
was not working right and would print as a v. This,
the Daylight Savings Time Expert Guy had to admit, made reading
his column something of a chore. But he has spent a nice chunk of
change upgrading his computer and getting some spiffy new word
processing software. The problem should not occur again. Thank
you for your patienceits great to be back! And now,
this weeks colcolu mcolcolu mcolcolu mcolcolu mcolcolu
mcolcolu mcolcolu mcolcolu mcolcolu mcolcolu mcolcolu mcolcolu
mcolcolu mcolcolu mcolcolu mcolcolu mcolcolu mcolcolu mcolcolu
mcolcolu mcolcolu mcolcolu mcolcolu mcolcolu mcolcolu mcolcolu
mcolcolu mcolcolu mcolcolu mcolcolu mcolcolu mcolcolu mcolcolu
mcolcolu mcolcolu mcolcolu mcolcolu mcolcolu mcolcolu mcolcolu
mcolcolu mcolcolu mcolcolu]

DEAR DAYLIGHT SAVINGS TIME EXPERT GUY:

I hear there is a plan afoot to extend
Daylight Savings Time by an hour. Is this true? And if so, where
will we get the extra hour from?

(signed)

Concerned

DEAR CONCERNED:

There are a couple of plans, really. In one
version, wed simply go on permanent DST; an alternate plan
calls for an extra hour of sunlight to be added sometime in July,
although its not clear (at least to me) whether wed
then lose both bonus hours at the same time or incrementally
during the Fall. In any case, neither plan is likely to come to
fruition. Although it was reported in the late nineties that we
had a surplus of hours that was expected to last well into the
next century, this turned out to be a bookkeeping error and in
reality the mega-hour surplus was a shortfall of 27
minutes and 19 seconds. This has since been made up by cutting 27
minutes from the Special 10th Anniversary Edition DVD
of Bill and Teds Excellent Adventure so
theres no danger that the hours are going to run out, but
if were talking about ADDING hours of sunlight... sorry.
Just aint gonna happen.

*

DEAR DAYLIGHT SAVINGS TIME EXPERT GUY:

The other day I woke up two hours early and
now I know that Daylight Savings is a total rip off. We
dont get any more daylight with DST, not one fargin
second. We just change the clock! I know it sounds incredible,
but its true. If you get up early enough, youll find
that the hour of darkness we supposedly lost at dusk is right
there at five oclock in the morning!

(signed)

Appalled

DEAR APPALLED:

What did you think we did with that extra
hour? Just threw it out? It obviously has to be stored somewhere
if were going to use it again in October. So yes, we store
it at 5 AM, when decent people are asleep. We used to keep it in
a storage facility in Queens, but back in 1972 there was a change
of ownership, the locks were replaced, and we had to break in
with crowbars to get it back. And when we did, there was mildew
damage. Thats why 6-7 PM smelled that way in the fall of
1972. Rather than risk something like that again, we just moved
that hour to the early morning, where it gets plenty of fresh air
and it can be inspected for routine maintenance as often as we
like.

*

DEAR DAYLIGHT SAVINGS TIME EXPERT GUY:

I know that all countries do not have
Daylight Savings Time, even have too much sunlight (countries
such as ones that are really hot). I was thinking that perhaps we
could trade something for their unwanted daylight? Probably there
is something they want that we have, just as vice versa. Maybe
some kind of beans, such as the ones with the little dots (just a
suggestion). What do you think?

(signed)

Enjoys the sunlight

DEAR ENJOYS:

During the Great Daylight Shortage of the
1830s, our fledgling democracy opened negotiations with
various tropical countries for their surplus daylight and even
set up an enormous and complex system of mirrors to transport it
to our shoresthe famous 300 foot Curved Mirror on
Marthas Vineyard is part of that system. The shortage ended
before the plan could be put into operation but if the situation
became dire once more, we would surely dust off those old giant
mirrors and do precisely what you suggestsugg gestsugg gestsugg
gestsugg gestsugg gestsugg gestsugg gestsugg gestsugg gestsugg
gestsugg gestsugg gestsugg gestsugg gestsugg gestsugg gestsugg
gestsugg gestsugg gestsugg gestsugg gestsugg gestsugg gestsugg
gestsugg gestsugg gestsugg gestsugg gestsugg gestsugg gestsugg
gestsugg gestsugg

*

DEAR DAYLIGHT SAVINGS TIME EXPERT GUY:

It seems to me that the big problem
everyone has with DST is that hour we cheat ourselves out of when
we set the clock forward. All of a sudden everybodys got
jet lag, and we didnt even go anywhere! Its crazy.
Solution: every week for 12 weeks we set the clock forward five
minutes. This gives everyones inner clock time to adjust to
the change. Andthis is the part Im really proud
ofthe FCC could use this in dealing with broadcasters who
violate community standards. Rather than fine these potty-mouths
X number of thousand dollars, which they just write off anyway,
they could be ordered NOT to adjust their broadcast schedules to
keep up with Daylight Savings Time so that people who keep tuning
into their shows will be missing 5 and then 10 and then 15
minutes of the show, which will eventually start hurting the
ratings, which is where these guys REALLY feel it. What do you
think?

(signed)

I have many other good ideas too, just ask
me about them

DEAR I:

I have examined your plan from every
conceivable angle, but I can find no flaw in your thinking.

*

DEAR DAYLIGHT SAVINGS TIME EXPERT GUY:

Despite all your whining, we can have as
much Daylight Savings Time as we want. All we need to do is use
solar batteries. As you know, these batteries absorb sunlight and
convert it into electrical power. Well, science tells us that if
you can make X into Y, you can just as easily make Y into X. In
other words, all we need to do is reconvert the electrical power
to sunlight and release it at whatever time of day wed like
more sunlight. And we can do this at any interval we
choosewe could decide to have six more hours of daylight on
December 29th, for instance, when we could all use it.
The best thing about this is we do not LOSE an hour of sunlight
somewhere elsetheres none of this clock-changing
nonsense involved, just ADDING more light.

(signed)

More light

DEAR MORE:

Science does not tell us that "if you
can make X into Y, you can just as easily make Y into X." A
pepperoni pizza every night for two weeks can easily change into
two extra inches around the hips, but you will be hard pressed to
change two extra inches around the waist into even a single slice
of pepperoni pizza. Still, I believe you are on the right track.
I am certain that all the problems surrounding Daylight Savings
Time will ultimately be solved through the application of
advanced technolo gytechnolo gytechnolo gytechnolo gytechnolo
gytechnolo gytechnolo gytechnolo gytechnolo gytechnolo gytechnolo
gytechnolo gytechnolo gytechnolo gytechnolo gytechnolo gytechnolo
gytechnolo gytechnolo gytechnolo gytechnolo gytechnolo gytechnolo

* * *

FREEZER BURN

The Park Theater was three days into a two-week
Ingmar Bergman Film Festival and the owner of the place was not
happy. We were doing incredible business a more-than
respectable crowd on Thursday, two sold out shows on Friday, and
a ticket line snaking past the health food store down the block
as we prepared to open up for the first Saturday night show.
"Im going broke!" he cried. The vein in his
forehead was visibly throbbing and the ushers were putting down
bets about exactly what time it would blow. Jay was giving odds.
Chuck the manager overheard us and gave us a dressing down.

"You pathetic little creeps," he
said. "Betting on when Nathan is going to stroke out.
Youre monsters. You have no hearts, no souls. I got $10
that says the vein pops at 8:15."

"Youre covered," said Jay.

The doors opened and the crowddecidedly
upscale for the Park, which specialized in movies about flesh
eating zombies and / or strippers in jeopardytrickled in. A
few people paused at the candy stand to purchase a (small) soda
or a (small) popcorn, but not many. During last weeks
double bill of "Motor Psycho" and "Faster Pussycat
Kill Kill" wed had to open the supply room three or
four times a night to restock the pre-popped popcorn (which was
stored (appropriately) in 30 gallon garbage bags). No danger of
that tonight.

"They buy NOTHING," Nathan wailed. He
often complained about how little the Park Theater made, but
these complaints ("This place is hemorrhaging money!!")
were perfunctory for the most part and probably intended to keep
anyone from asking for a raise. Tonight it was different. He was
genuinely upset. He was used to losing money when the seats were
empty, he explained; you took your chances, you showed something
offbeat, nobody showed up, okay, you chalk it up to experience.
But here we were with fannies in every seat and NOBODY WAS BUYING
ANYTHING AT THE CANDY STAND. If the candy stand didnt turn
a profit the theater didnt turn a profit; it was as simple
as that. It was heartbreaking. It was maddening. It was
hilarious, at least if you were an usher.

I had five bucks that said the vein would erupt
sometime between 7:30 and 7:45 butit was now 7:18his
face was getting redder and redder and I was starting to think I
had been way too conservative. "Im going broke!"
One of his eyes was twitching and bulging and looked about 50%
larger than the other one.

People just didnt want to scarf down
popcorn while they got morbidly depressed watching Liv Ullman and
Max von Sydow wallow in angst. And it was angst, angst, angst.
They were angsting it up like crazy in these movies.

"Maybe they want something less
popcorny," said one of the candy girls. "Some kind of,
you know, depressing Swedish food."

Nathan blinked. "Less popcorny," he
repeated. His right eye slowly returned to normal size. Jay, who
had put his money on 7:25, slapped the candy counter in disgust
and stomped out of the lobby. Nathan didnt notice this.
"Less popcorny," he said. "You know, Ive
often thought the same thing. These are not popcorn people. They
need something with more class. You," he said to me,
"Go to the office, get some oak tag and your Magic Markers.
Well need a sign."

"Whats it gonna say, Mr.
Nathan?"

"Ill be back in a few minutes,"
he said dreamily, and left. We all exchanged looks. No veins
would be popping tonight. I sighed and went to get my sign-making
equipment.

Nathan returned with a grocery bag.
"Well need a sign. Im not concerned tonight with
profit per se, this is an experiment, so lets say $3 per
box, which represents a 33% mark-up. Its nothing, but this
is an experiment. This is what I want," he said. I took
notes on a legal pad. "Uh... Special during our Ingmar
Bergman Festival. Swedish Treats, $3 a box. Any variety.
Classy lettering, none of your dripping blood-type of
signs."

"Okay," I said sadly.

"Here we go," he said. He reached
into the grocery bag and pulled out a box of frozen chocolate
bon-bons. "Before anybody says anything, I know theyre
not really Swedish Treats, in the sense that they
come from Sweden, but I also know the Scandinavians go for these
in a big way, so theres no misrepresentation going on here.
I should have thought of this a long time ago."

"How do you spell
variety?" I asked. "The same as the
newspaper?"

"Exactly." He hung around just long
enough to make sure I was using classy lettering. "Ive
got to get over to the Rialto. Ill call later to see how
the Swedish Treats are moving. Better get those in
the freezer."

He strolled out the door.

"What freezer?" asked the candy girl.

Chuck the manager rubbed his temple and made a
kind of "mmmgggghhh" noise. There were 12 boxes of
bon-bons and there was no freezer on the premises. Chuck got
Trish the ticket girl to call her mom and ask if shed drive
over and store the bon-bons in her freezer. Trishs mom said
yes, but it took her twenty minutes to get there and by that time
the Swedish Treats had devolved into Box
o Glop.

I felt that I could make a pretty good case
that if a guy goes out and buys 20 dollars worth of bon-bons to
put in a freezer that doesnt exist, the vein has probably
popped, but since Nathan had come up with the Swedish Treat idea
at 7:23, Jay would have won the bet, so I didnt mention it.

ENTER... THE
CLAMETTES!

"I been thinking," said Mulberry
Street Joey Clams one afternoon at the Custom Neon Sign Shop,
bravely peering into the depths of his falafel, "we gotta
get some customers in here. Once they came in and saw our New
Fall Line of Custom Neon Signs, wed have more work than we
could handle."

"New Fall Line?" I said.

"Im thinking about an open house
kinda thing. Little glasses of that clear wine, and those little
sandwiches with the classy toothpicks."

"Classy?"

"Theres these toothpicks with curly
little ribbons on them," he explained.

"Lets get back to the New Fall Line.
This is the first Im hearing about it."

"Well work that out," he said.
"Maybe some new colors or something. The open house... I see
this as a show. You know. Songs and stuff, to get across the New
Fall Line."

"Which doesnt exist yet..."

"Yeah, yeah, yeah." He waved this
objection away with the falafel in his right hand. "We need
some girls. Uh..." He grunted in a slightly higher register
than usual, signifying that normally unexploited portions of his
brain were kicking into gear. "They will be called... The
Clamettes."

"The Clamettes," I said.

"Its the female of
Clam," said Mulberry Street Joey Clams. "It
would work like this. I would come out on the stage and thank
everybody for coming, and then Id say, uh, And now
ladies an gennelmen, please welcome... The Clamettes!
And the Clamettes would come out on stage. There would be this
da-da-da-DA-DAH type music. And the Clamettes would say,
And now Ladies and Gentlemen, here he is... This is
two separate Clamettes so far, I dont know if you picked
that up. The first Clamette says, And now ladies and
gennelmen, and the second one says here he is.
And the third one says, The host of the show,
something like that, and then all six of them say, Mulberry
Street Joey Clams!"

"Six of them."

"Yeah. All blondes except for this really
hot one in a top hat. Anyway, they all say, Mulberry Street
Joey Clams! All at the same time, I mean."

"Right. Theyll have to practice
that."

"Absolutely. And theres more of the
da-da-da-DA-DAH music. And I come out and I say, Thank you,
ladies and gennelmen. Because they been applauding like
maniacs. Ladies an Genelmenthe Clamettes!
What do you think?"

"Its great. So you introduce the
Clamettes, and then the Clamettes introduce you, and then you
introduce the Clamettes again?"

"Exactly."

"Then what? They introduce you again? I
love it. Then you could introduce the Clamettes. Then... the
Clamettes could introduce you. And then you introduce them.
Its simple, but elegant. Youve just got to remember
who got introduced last. I mean, you dont want to introduce
the Clamettes and then introduce them right away, until
theyve introduced you again. Otherwise youll look
like an idiot."

I was treading on very dangerous ground here
but an idea as stupid as The Clamettes is likely to cross your
path only once in a lifetime and I knew that if I didnt do
my best to help Mulberry Street Joey Clams wring the maximum
amount of stupidity out of it, I would never cease to regret it.
I didnt want to push it too far, because if Mulberry Street
Joey Clams realized that I was making fun of him, it could get
unpleasant. There was no danger that hed fire me, since I
did all the actual work at the Custom Neon Sign Shop, but he
would probably pout for a couple of days and refuse to speak to
me directly. Speaking to me indirectly was difficult because we
were the only two people in the shop. He had to say things like,
"If there was a THIRD guy working here I would tell him to
tell Grimshaw to call Mr. Damato and tell him his sign was
ready," and I would say, "If the third guy told me to
call Mr. Damato Id tell him to do it himself,
Im busy with this bagel, whereas the third guy isnt
doing anything as far as I can tell." This sort of thing
infuriated Mulberry Street Joey Clams but it would get him
speaking directly to me sooner or later.

However, this time Mulberry Street Joey Clams
was so enraptured by his vision of the Clamettes that it
didnt occur to him that I might not be offering all this
advice in good faith. "Well have to advertise.
Well have auditions..."

"Ill make up some fliers.
WANTEDCLAMETTES. Hows that for
starters?" I was thinking maybe the second line should be
something along the lines of Hot Brunette Needed to Wear
Top Hat. Own Top Hat Preferred But Not Essential.

"I dunno... I dont think you get
professional dancers with fliers. Ill call Uncle
Dannyhe knows about this stuff." He picked up the
phone, but there was no dial tone because we hadnt paid the
bill for a few months. "Well call from my
mothers place. Cmon."

I was always a little nervous going to Mulberry
Street Joey Clams mothers apartment, because I had no
idea what to call her. Certainly not Mrs. Clams. She
probably had no idea that her son called himself Mulberry
Street Joey Clams. I didnt know what his real name
was. Or hers.

"Nah, nothing like that. Were gonna
have a open house at the Sign Shop, thats all, and we need
some girls who can dance. Were going to call em
The Clamettes."

"Thats so cute! The Glamettes!
Little Glamour Girls! What about your cousin Teresa? She takes
dance classes. Ill call your Aunt Angela and tell her you
need dancers. Maybe the other girls in her class could..."

"Little GLAMOUR girls. Not little CLAMS.
Nobody wants to be a little clam anyway. You have to
promise."

"Maaaaaaaa...."

He promised, but of course once hed
promised to use his cousin Teresa as the lead dancer in his Open
House extravaganza, he lost his desire to have an open house.

And so the Clamettes never got to introduce
Mulberry Street Joey Clams introducing the Clamettes introducing
Mulberry Street Joey Clams, and nobody got to introduce the New
Fall Line, which was probably just as well, since there was no
New Fall Line to introduce anyway.

FUN WITH YOUR
NEW TOYS

Once upon a time I accompanied my friend Chuck
to a Tower Video store in Paramus. Chuck looked around and
noticed that there were a lot of new DVDs and no new laser discs
whatsoever. "I knew it," he muttered, "I just
bleeping KNEW it." He buttoned-holed a shaggy guy behind the
counter and snarled, "You lying bleep! You SWORE to me there
would be no more technological advances!!" I couldnt
decide what was crazierthat Shaggyd told Chuck there
would be no more technological advances, or that Chuck had
believed him. Either way, I had a warm sense of satisfaction;
Chuck had been giving me a hard time for years about my refusal
to take the leap into laser discs. "Those VHS tapes of yours
are going to stretch, theyre going to get scratched,
theyre going to degrade," he said over and over.
"Some afternoon youre going to want to watch
"2001" and when you pop it in the tape player,
youre going to discover that tape got stretched just a
little and the sound will be awful. What then?"

What then indeed. Although I was
right to resist the siren call of laser discsnot because I
knew they were about to turn into the 8 Track Tapes of the
nineties, but because my middle name is "Inertia"
I occasionally sympathize with Chuck, and wish I had my own
shaggy guy behind some counter to grab by the shirt and snarl at
every time technology takes another great leap forward. Every
time, for instance, Im at someone elses house and
somebody yells from the kitchen, "Flip on the Yankee game
for a second and get the score," Im flummoxed. I
goggle at the battery of remotes on the coffee table and despair.
I tell myself its an embarrassment of richesgrandpa
never confused the TV remote with the DVD remote or the TiVo with
the CD player because he just had a Philco radio. I really hate
feeling like Im not keeping up. I mean, you know the old
George Carlin bit about how everybody who drives faster than you
is a "maniac" and everybody who drives more slowly is a
"moron" and there are a lot of maniacs and morons out
there? There are two corollaries to this. Number One: It works
for everything. Everybody who gets offended by the dirty joke you
told is a prude; everybody who didnt get offended by a
dirty joke that disgusted you has no moral standards. Everybody
to your left politically is a howling moon bat; everybody to your
right is a fascist Neanderthal. And everybody LESS comfortable
with new technology is a horse-and-buggy luddite, while everybody
MORE comfortable with it is a computer geek with no social life.
Number Two: You can deduce exactly where you are on any of these
scales by the "moron" to "maniac" ratio. That
is, if youre surrounded by maniacs and rarely encounter
morons, youre probably going about twenty-five miles under
the speed limit. Well, as recently as ten years ago I was
surrounded by luddites who couldnt figure out how to delete
an email. Now Im up to my armpits in computer geeks and
Im yelling, "Hey! Get out of the basement once in a
while, Four eyes!"

This is not good.

All this is by way of prologue. I got a new
cell phone and it took me two days to figure out how to work it.
And "figure out" is me being really generous to myself.
Some of the problem was due to me being, you know, sort of
out of it, and some of it, I believe, was not.

PROBLEM NUMBER ONE: "To activate your new
phone," said the instructions, "you must call the 800
number below." Well, I tried to do this several times and I
kept getting a recording saying that the number

Id dialed was not in my calling area. My
calling area is the continental United States plus Puerto Rico
and the Virgin Islands, which made me wonder where I was calling.
So I called Customer Service, explained the problem, and got a
lot of "huh" and "hmmm" sounds for a while,
and eventually the person on the other end (who really needs to
get out of the basement once in a while) activated my new phone.
She said she was doing it "manually," but since she
didnt have the phone in her hands and I heard a lot of key
board clicking, I had a brief, totally unjustified sense of
superiority for about 8 seconds.

Later it dawned on me that the phone
didnt connect with the 800 number because it hadnt
been activated yetyes, I tried to activate the unactivated
phone by making a phone call on the phone which hadnt been
activated yet. This seemed to make perfect sense when I was doing
itId dial this number, there would be some beeps and
whirrs, and the phone in my hand would be fully functional. It
didnt occur to me that activating a cell phone is done the
same way you activate a credit card. The person who wrote the
instruction book didnt mention that you need to dial the
800 number on your home phone, because it was self-evident. The
cell phone wouldnt work. Of COURSE you call it on another
phone! Why waste ink belaboring the obvious?

Because the person reading the instructions
might be me, thats why.

The editor has inexplicably refused my request
to cut out all those real estate ads to make room for PROBLEMS
2-16, which are therefore omitted.

PROBLEM NUMBER 17: My new earpiece refused to
recognize my phone, or vice-versa. I know this sounds like
Im having a flashback to that party in 1968 where Danny
Corbins mom put the wrong mushrooms on the pizza, but
Im not. In this mod-a-go-go world your bluetooth handsfree
connection must be PAIRED with your phone, and to do this they
have to... well, I dont know what THEY have to do, but what
I had to do, according to the instruction book, is go to MENU,
then select SETTINGS, then select CONNECTION, then select
BLUETOOTH LINK, then select SETUP, then select FIND ME, and then
the two pieces of hardware are supposed to do that voodoo they do
so well. But they didnt. Not on the first try, not on the
fifth. So it was back to customer service, and I was walked
through the whole thing. After FIND ME, I had to return to
BLUETOOTH LINK and then go back to FIND ME, and then everything
was fine. "You know, it doesnt say that in the
instructions," I said.

"Yeah. Its counterintuitive, so
people found it confusing."

"But... uh... er... but... I mean...
dont they find it confusing that the instructions are
wrong?" My guess was that an editor looked at
this, said, "this makes no sense," and edited it out.

"They just call us," he said,
"and theyre usually really glad when they find out it
isnt their fault. When the instructions were right and they
didnt follow them theyd call, too, of course, but
when we told them, you didnt follow the instructions
and go back to bluetooth and then return to
find me, theyd often get very defensive and
sometimes angry. This is nicer."

Any comment I made after that would have been
superfluous.

EMMAS
NEW DIGS

In Which My Daughter Phones
to Announce That She and Her Roommate Have Found an Apartment

ME: Well, good.

EMMA: Yes, it is. There are French Bulldogs
everywhere. Chocolate ones.

ME: What?

EMMA: It means brown.

ME: I know. You mean in the apartment?

EMMA: The neighborhood. And chocolate puggies,
too.

ME: Most people who just signed a lease for
their first ever apartment would probably start off with
something besides the neighborhood bulldog situation. Like, oh,
how many rooms.

EMMA: Four or five. Im not totally sure.

ME: What floor is it on?

EMMA: I think the fourth. Im pretty sure.

ME: Is there an elevator in the building?

EMMA: I dont need an elevator.

ME: Are you planning to move the furniture
upstairs with your telekinetic powers?

EMMA: I dont need telekinetic powers,
either. You so underestimate my endurance and strength. I walk
from the dorm to Wall Street all the time.

ME: You do?

EMMA: Well, Im capable of it.

ME: You didnt get this through a broker,
did you?

EMMA: No, no. I found it on Craigs List.
Oh, is this an interview? Talk about how I got tickets on
Craigs List to that talk by John Mechum, from Newsweek? And
how I made him blush? By asking him that question about how Bill
Clinton lost his virginity? I mean, its in his book.
Mechum is a professional journalist, he should have read it.

ME: Um...

EMMA: Uh-oh! Oh no.

ME: Whats the matter?

EMMA: My computer!! Its been quarantined
by NYUs Internet Service!

ME: What do you mean its been
quarantined?

EMMA: I just tried to go online and this
dialogue popped up and said your computer is
quarantined!

ME: Why?

EMMA: Im checking... huh.

ME: Whats wrong?

EMMA: My computer is infected with all these
trojans and viruses and stuff. This is depressing.

ME: How many trojans?

EMMA: Over 200. And thirty-something worms. All
together its more than 600 things Ive got to delete
from my computer to get back online. Ugh. Its because I
keep downloading all these Yahoo! games.

ME: Well, why do you...

EMMA: Lets not talk about that. The Mets
are definitely going to get to the World Series this year because
I gave up Diet Pepsi for their championship run.

ME: You do that every year and they
havent been in the Series since you were two...

EMMA: You just have no idea. Im
giving it up until the 2nd of October if they
dont get into the playoffs. Or till the end if they do. Oh,
Devra wants to go see the Willy Wonka movie. I do not. I
am opposed to making Roald Dahl books into movies, except for
"Danny the Great," which is the best one. Im not
sure who should be in it. Not Freddy Highmore, Im
adamant.

ME: I have no idea who that is.

EMMA: Im so surprised.

ME: Could we get back to your new apartment?
How long did you look?

EMMA: Forever.

ME: How many apartments did you see before this
one?

EMMA: Approximately one million.

ME: How many boroughs did you look in?

EMMA: Just Manhattan and Brooklyn. A lot of
them didnt count though.

ME: Didnt count in what sense?

EMMA: They were in slums. Ive
deleted 19 viruses.

ME: Can I call you back? I need to take a break
for a couple of minutes.

EMMA: If its a you-know-what break, take
the NY Post in the bathroom with you and see if you can finish
the Su Doko puzzle before youre done.

ME: The Post Su Doko puzzles are ridiculously
easy. Koko the gorilla could do them.

EMMA: Untrue. Beginning today they have increased
the difficulty of the second puzzle.

ME: Ill call you back in a few minutes.

EMMA: My computer will be disinfected by the
time we resume.

[Twelve Minutes Later]

ME: Im back. I want to know a little more
about your new neighborhood.

EMMA: Did you do the puzzle?

ME: Almost. I screwed something up and I got
two sevens in the same line.

EMMA: Loooooser.

ME: About the neighborhood...

EMMA: Its the Upper East Side. Its
all gourmet markets and French Bulldogs.

A couple of local hicks got into a drag race and the one in
the 56 BelAir creamed the transformer by the gate to Camp
Altaha. He wasnt hurt but the paint job on the BelAir was
ruined and he was still swearing and kicking the defunct
transformer when the cops arrived and hauled him away, much to
the amusement of the assembled Camp Altaha campers. But now the
camp had no power.

Of course we slept in tents and lived a mostly
electricity-free existance anyway, aside from our battery-powered
transistor radios. The only real problem was the mess hall. The
grown-ups got the generator running within a couple of hours and
most of the refrigerated food was deemed salvageable, aside from
the ice cream. It was pretty gloppy, and rather than refreeze
itwhich imparts a foul taste and texture all the
Scouts were ordered to line up for what was called "A Very
Special Treat." A cone of delicious glop, mostly vanilla,
contaminated with rich veins of melted chocolate and strawberry.

Picarillo was a vanilla man and used his wooden spoon to
sluice off as much of the other flavors as possible.
"Youre an idiot, Picarillo," said Calvano.
"Youre losing twice as much vanilla as chocolate, and
youre gonna end up eating chocolate anyway."

Picarillo ignored him and continued sluicing, the tip of his
tongue protruding from the intense concentration. Suddenly he
cried, "Gaak!"

"Spoon it out, genius," said Calvano.
"Itll be easier than the chocolate, no lie."

"I... I... I cant eat a ice cream cone with a BUG
in it," Picarillo stammered.

"A course not," Calvano said. "So spoon it
out."

"Is the whole cone ruined? Its a MOSQUITO!"

"I guarantee if the mosquito landed in his mashed
potatoes, theyd already be in the garbage can," I
said.

"But its ice cream," Picarillo whispered.

"Spoon it out," Calvano said, "while
theres still time. Every second you wait, you gotta spoon
out more ice cream. While youre gabbing the mosquito is
pumping more and more yellow fever into your cone."

Picarillo quickly spooned out the mosquito and a fair amount
of ice cream, and deposited them on a flat stone wed been
using earlier in the day to detonate a roll of caps from a
(contraband!) cap gun.

"Enough?" said Picarillo.

"Maybe. Well know definitely when you get sick as a
dog and die later tonight."

Picarillo spooned out about half the remaining ice cream.

"Okay, I think thatll do it. If the ice cream had
been firmer, the poison might have spread rapidly throughout the
entire cone by now. But by melting, most of the channels through
which the poison would have traveled were collapsed. Youre
safe. Probably. Dig in."

Picarillo took a tentative lick. "Yeah, I got everything
out," he said. "Definitely. But you know what I wonder?
When a mosquito gives you yellow fever or something, does it HAVE
yellow fever? I mean, is it sick? Or is the yellow fever in a
separate compartment, like snake poison?"

"The fact is, it can happen either way," Calvano
said. "It depends upon the type of mosquito. Some types are,
indeed, immune to the diseases they carry and store the tainted
blood in a sort of tube within the body, much like a chamber of
Batmans utility belt. Other, less fortunate varieties, suck
the poisoned blood directly into their own stomachs and then
sickness and death shortly follow."

"What about werewolves?" Picarillo asked. This was a
pretty amazing non-sequitor even for Picarillo, and it was a
while before Calvano could bring himself to ask:

"What about them?"

"If a mosquito bites a werewolf and then bites somebody
else, is it the same as being bit by the werewolf? Does the guy
bit by the mosquito turn into a werewolf?"

"Uuuhhh..."

"And does the mosquito turn into a WERE-mosquito?"

"Science tells us theres not enough blood involved
in the first case to turn somebody into a werewolf. I mean, think
about it, Picarillo. Werewolves are always lurking around swamps
where youve got mosquitoes up the wazoo. They must get bit
like 80 times a minute. So everybody around the swamp would be a
werewolf in about three weeks if you could catch werewolfism like
that. Plus, thered be all these stories about people who
turn into werewolves and they have no idea why. Have you ever
heard of that?"

"Well, no..."

"Thats right. Doesnt happen. Now, as far as
the were-mosquito goes, its unclear, but many top
scientists feel its possible. VERY possible."

"Geez," said Picarillo. We all sat in silence,
wondering about were-mosquitoes, when Picarillo emitted his
second "Gaak!" of the day.

Down on the surface of the flat rock, the mosquito was
stirring, trying to extricate itself from the viscous vanilla.
"Its alive," said Picarillo.

"Tough break, Picarillo," said Calvano. "You
know the Scout law. Now youll have to take care of it and
nurse it back to health."

"I dunno how to... I mean, its a mosquito." He
placed a corner of his paper napkin into the glop, so the
mosquito could get some traction, but the mosquito seemed
unwilling to avail itself of this.

"What if its a were-mosquito?" I said.

"Well, he should have thought of that before he whacked
it with his ice cream."

"But I didnt..." said Picarillo.

"Stop. We were right here, remember? Besides," said
Calvano, "Maybe when it gets healthy, you can teach it to do
tricks."

Steve and I were film students and we were
broke, but that wasnt the major problem. The major problem
was that we looked broke. There we wereaviator glasses,
uncombed hair, beat-up sneakers, a copy of "The
Cinematographers Manual" poking out of the back
pocket... we looked so cool! We had no idea that every carefully
selected item of clothing or accessory was a neon sign screaming
BROKE! or NERD or (if there was a hunk of
tape on the aviators) (and there was) "BROKE NERD!" As
far as girls were concerned, we might as well have been bathing
in formaldehyde, and we couldnt understand it.

And yet there was Lee Orloff. His neon warning
signs flashed just as loudly as ours did, and yet he was always
going out with these incredible girls. What was his secret?

It turned out to be dogs. Lee worked for a dog
walking service, and he worked all the angles to walk the cute
scruffy little dogsthe very dogs that would have majored in
film if theyd gotten into NYUand the incredible girls
stopped HIM on the street and started talking. To be fair to Lee,
its still very easy to blow it at that point, so he must
have had something on the ball to get those phone numbers. But
without the dogs, those girls would have never talked to him. If
hed talked to them, they would have called the cops.

We didnt find this out until Lee started
his own dog walking service. Lee got his dog walkers (virtually
all of them his fellow film students) by telling them the dogs
were chick magnets. At first he paid some absurdly tiny wage for
each walk, and then as word spread about how effective these
magnets really were, guys paid HIM to walk the dogs. There were
bidding wars over walking this mostly-Scottie mutt with a tail
that curled up like a backwards question mark.

Steve and I had way too much pride to walk dogs
for Lee, let alone pay for the privilege. We watched a dead
ringer for Valerie Bertinelli squeal at the mostly-Scottie and
then chat with the guy walking ithe looked like a
ventriloquists dummy, or would have, if his acne
hadnt been so bad.

"Pathetic," said Steve. I adjusted
the tape on my glasses and agreed. Wed just finished
shooting a fake Alka-Seltzer commercial for our
non-narrative film workshop and were hauling 60 or 70
pounds of equipment back to the school. While we were waiting for
a Dont Walk light to change I took out the
Bolex and cleaned the lens. After we dropped off the equipment
Steve said, "You know, while you were fooling around with
the Bolex, this girl was checking us out."

"Yeah?"

"Yeah. She was kind of hot. Im
thinking here. Maybe... movies could be as good as dogs,
chick-wise. Maybe better."

"Because we wouldnt be paying Lee
Orloff."

"Theres that," he said. We sat
in the park and figured out a plan of attack. Wed have a
camera and a tripod, set up some place there were bound to be
plenty of girlsa target-rich environment.
Wed look at our watches, as though we were waiting for
someone, and finally one of us would approach a likely young lady
and explain that our actress hadnt shown up, and we needed
to finish this project today, and we just needed a couple of
reaction shots... Well, how could any girl say no to that?

A couple of days later we set up our borrowed
equipment on a corner of Washington Square and put our foolproof
plan into effect. The first five or six girls I approached blew
me off, but most of them were nice about it. Then Steve
approached three or four girls, and did no better. We quickly
eliminated entire classes of females from our pool of possible
actressesgirls wearing pumps wouldnt even
stop to hear the pitch, ditto girls with gym bags; girls walking
dogs usually listened, but they had a built-in excuse for not
hanging around on the end of the leash, so they were also out.

Eventually I convinced a semi-cute girl in
cut-off overalls to help us out. We hadnt planned to settle
for semi-cute, but we were getting a little impatient. I brought
her over to Steve, who was pretending to study the readings on
the light meter. "Wow, thank you so much, miss. Youre
a life saver."

"Whats this movie about?" said
the lifesaver. Steve and I gaped and looked at each other,
dumbfounded. We had no idea what the movie was about. I started
to improvise something stupid, but the pause had been a little
too long and a little too dumbfounded. Miss Overalls narrowed her
eyes and hit the bricks. We folded the tripod up and retreated to
a diner, to figure out the movie. We worked up a rudimentary plot
about a runaway balloon. We just need some shots of you looking
up and seeing the balloon, wed tell the girl. We went back
to the park but had no luck that day.

A week or so later we had another whack at it
and this time we snagged the fifth girl we asked. Penny. We spent
20 minutes framing her in the lens of the filmless camera,
reacting to the non-existent balloon. "Now it pops!"
Steve said. "Look sad. EXCELLENT!"

We offered to buy her lunch but she already had
plans. "How do we get hold of you for the premiere?"
asked Steve. She hesitated before giving him a phone number.
"If Im not there, just give the information to my
boyfriend," she said.

We got better at recognizing which girls would
agree to fill in for our missing actress; by the
sixth or seventh week, we had something like a 60% success rate,
if you define success as girl will make faces for the
camera for half an hour or so. Our balloon movie got more
and more elaborate, and our recruitment technique smoother and
better. Id bring an aspiring actress to Steve and hed
moan, "No, nothis girl is way too good looking. We
need somebody more ordinary. Im sorry, miss..."
"Steve, we got no time!" Id plead. "All
right," hed sigh. "Okay. Ill try to shoot
it so she wont look too distracting..." Then, after a
couple of reaction shots: "Cut! CUT! Jeff, we cant do
this. This girl is obviously a professional actress. Well
have to pay Screen Actors Guild rates, or well have the
union on our butts, not to mention her agent..." The girl
would assure us shed never acted before.
"Incredible," wed say, shaking our heads. We, or
anyway Steve, started getting phone numbers that worked.

We took turns being the director, but I
realized the girls Steve was bringing me were not nearly as
attractive as the girls I was bringing him, and that even when
they were, he got the phone number anyway. We had a falling out.
The balloon movie was shelved. I was drowning my sorrows at the
Student Union and there was Lee Orloff, playing darts. I asked
him how it was going. He said so-so. With the new pooper-scooper
law it wasnt as easy to get dog walkers. A couple of months
ago, guys were paying him 5 bucks to walk the almost-Scottie.
"What does it cost now?" I asked.

"A mere $3.50," he said. "Or you
can walk him three times and pay just ten bucks."

Calvano and I found a couple of frozen catfish in his freezer
and decided it would be neat to borrow one and toss it back and
forth like a football.

We went over to my Uncle Tugs house because he had a big
back yard where we could run patterns. He also had a swimming
pool.

We certainly had no intention of swimming in the pool, since
Tug "saved a bundle" by not hooking up the filter or
adding chlorine to the water, which was consequently coated with
a thick scum of algae.

But we figured that when the catfish thawed to the point where
you could no longer put a nice spiral on the throw, wed
slip it into the pool and check out Calvanos theory that if
you stuck a dead fish back in the water, it returned to life.

Tug had been nonplused to see us arrive with the catfish, but
raised no objection to our throwing it around in his backyard.
Later he told us hed assumed it was vinyl or something.

So he sat in his lounge chair reading The Racing Form and
listening to a cassette of Sammy Davis Jr.s Greatest Hits
while we ran post patterns and sent the catfish in beautiful
spiraling arcs over the rhododendrons.

But the afternoon heated up and the catfish grew steadily less
stiff. It began leaving a sort of brownish paste on our hands.
Neighborhood cats stated to show an interest in the proceedings.
Tug asked, "You guys smell something?"

It was time, Calvano told me, to slip the fish into the pool
and reanimate it.

"I dunno," I said. "Maybe we waited too long.
It looks deader now than it did in the freezer. A lot
deader."

Calvano didnt say anything.

"Do you think itll start swimming as soon as it
hits the water?" I continued.

"Well," said Calvano, "Its hard to say.
Probably not. It might take a few minutes. And its possible
that the catfish has sustained brain damage after all that time
in the freezer, not to mention that time you dropped it on that
button-hook pattern."

"You underthrew it."

"Whatever. The point is, were not looking for
miracles here. If it moves at all, were ahead of the game.
Thawing brain tissue is a delicate matter. Thats why
theyre going to wait a while with Walt Disney, even after
they find a cure for cancer. Theyll wanna check it out the
defrosting process on some frozen dead criminals or something
before they take a chance with Walt. Fact."

Rather than drop the fish right in the poolsomething we
dimly suspected Tug might balk atwe decided to make it look
unintentional. Calvano would toss the fish underhand in my
direction and I would fail to catch it and it would sail
unimpeded into the pool.

However, the fish had grown so slimy that it slipped off
Calvanos palm during his wind up and landed in Tugs
lap.

Tug erupted into the air as though... well, as though someone
had tossed a dead fish in his lap.

The fish shot off his lap and into the pool more or less as
planned while Tug swore frantically and wiped the catfish residue
off his pants with a wad of newspaper.

Calvano and I raced to the edge of the pool to see if the
catfish was moving.

"Boys," said Tug.

We couldnt really tell. There was a hole in the sheet of
algae that the catfish had made, but the scum was so thick we
could see nothing else.

"Boys," Tug said again.

"I think it must be swimming around in there," said
Calvano. "If it was still dead, it would float to the
surface. It' still down there, so it must be swimming
around. Q. E. D."

"Boys," said Tug. "The trouble here is, you
have no direction in life. For all your affluence, you are
underprivileged. Its not your fault. Its the
do-gooders in this town. When they shut down the pool halls back
in 53, the kids had no place to go, and what happens?
Instead of developing their eye-hand coordination and learning
the value of money and so on, they end up in my backyard throwing
dead fish at each other. Its a national disgrace is what it
is. No direction in life. But I will give you direction. My
direction is, get that dead fish out of my pool. Do it. Do it
now."

It took us 12 minutes to locate the fishit was on the
bottom of the pooland get it out with the aid of a stick
with a pin on the end which Tug had acquired while policing the
beach one long ago summer.

"Is it dead?" I asked Calvano. "I mean, is it
still dead, or is it dead again? What do you think?"

A Mah-Jong craze swept America in the 1920sthere
was a song by Billy Rose called "Since Mama Plays Mah
Jong" ("If you want to play the game / Ill tell
you what to do / Buy a silk kimono and begin to raise a queue /
Get yourself a book of rules and study till its clear / And
youll know the game when youve got whiskers down to
here..."). In 1923 Mah Jong sets outsold radios. Then
America turned its attention to flagpole sitting and Mah Jong
faded from the national whatever, although it remained popular in
small select enclavesJewish matrons in Brooklyn, for
instance. I lived there for several years and occasionally heard
a demented cry of "PUNG!" or CHOW!" from the
neighbors apartment. I like to think they dressed up in
kimonos but they probably didnt.

Once I left Brooklyn I didnt give Mah Jong another
thought until I discovered that some women in my social circle
had begun to play it on a regular basis. I would have filed that
away in the find out if they wear kimonos drawer and
forgotten about it, but one evening I found out that this was a
co-educational Mah Jong circle; there were two guys who (at least
occasionally) joined in the festivities. I found this out because
one of them actually won a game. This was Dom. He explained how
Mary THOUGHT shed won but it turned out shed made an
illegal bid so she lost her turn and the game continued, and Dom
prevailed.

I was intrigued by this masculine intrusion into what Id
heretofore considered a feminine preserve. Of course there are
often perfectly rational explanations for such thingsI
started going to yoga class when it was pointed out to me that I
would usually be the only man in a room full of flexible,
open-minded women. But Dom is married, and his wife is one
of the Mah-Jongers, or Mah Jongettes, or whatever they call them.
I wanted to figure out just what was in it for Dom.

First I wanted to bone up a little on the rules of Mah Jong,
so Id know what I was talking about.

Well, this is always a bad idea, but this time it was really a
bad idea. I now know considerably less than I did before I read
the rules, because no two sets of rules are the same and none of
them make any sense. Even when the rules are written in
reasonably lucid English I was unable to decipher them. It was
like reading the chess instructions that came with my Japanese
chess set, which begin, "First you must line up your
chesses."

There are local variations in staggering profusionover
450,000,000 different ones have been recorded in Brooklyn alone.

Well, not really, but there are a lot of them. And apparently
whenever a new variation occurs, the variation is more complex
than the branch it sprang from. For instance, in what my
encyclopedia drolly calls the American variations,
there is something called a Charleston. To quote from
one of the less maddening rule books:

"Before each hand begins, a Charleston is enacted.
This consists of a procedure where three tiles are passed to the
player on one's right, followed by three tiles passed to the
player opposite, followed by three tiles passed to the left. If
all players agree, a second Charleston is enacted, followed by an
optional pass to the player across of one, two or three tiles.
This is a distinctive feature of American-style Mahjong that may
have been borrowed from card games."

Got that?

Several authorities insist that the rules are so complicated
to prevent cheating, but it seems to me that at some point the
rules become so complicated that you are playing T.I.G.W.A.R., or
The Incredible Game Without Any Rules. Novice poker players
sometimes discover that have not been playing poker but
T.I.G.W.A.R when they produce (for example) two pairan
apparently winning handand attempt to claim the pot.
"Gee, your other card is the seven of hearts," says one
of the more experienced players. "We forgot to explain that
if the left-over card is the seven of hearts..." "...Or
the queen of spades," interjects another expert.
"...Right, or the queen of spades, you LOSE the hand and the
rest of the players split the pot." I would guess this sort
of thing is endemic in Mah Jong. Lord knows it would be if I were
playing.

At any rate, your reporter was now fully engaged in the
subject, and conducted the following interview with Dom, outside
a gelato shop in Westfield, New Jersey.

ME: How often do you play?

DOM: Not that often. Not often at all. Maybe once a month.
They only call me when they dont have enough people. The
number of people has to be divisible by four. So if they only
have 15 people, they call me. If they have 12 or 16 they
dont.

ME: How good are you?

DOM: Ive won three times. I won the first game I played,
but it was beginners luck.

ME: You must be very secure in your masculinity to play Mah
Jong. I mean, Ive always thought of it as sort of a
womans game...

DOM: No, no, not at all. Over HERE, mostly women play it. I
dont know why. In Asia, its totally different.
Serious gamblers play it. A lot of men play it.

When he said men, the italics were audible. He
clearly didnt mean just, you know, men. He meant MEN. I
pictured Lee Marvin, Robert Mitchum, Vin Diesel and the whole
cast of The Magnificent Seven except maybe Horst
Buchholz, all discarding tiles and periodically crying
"Pung!" and "Chow," with the testosterone
coming off them in waves so strong that it peeled the wall paper
right off the wall.

To check this theory out, I googled "Vin Diesel Mah
Jong." I did this, I confess, with the expectation that I
would be able to continue, "...and I got no hits whatsoever,
so there goes that theory," but to my amazement I got 5100
hits, which pretty much killed my cheap joke.

What do Vin and Mah Jong have in common? Is he in fact a Mah
Jong fiend, going head to head and tile to tile with Chuck Norris
or The Rock in Hong Kong even as we speak?

Alas no. The common link turns out to be video
gamesthere are several games based on the films in
Vins oeuvre, and there are several
virtual Mah Jong games, and they are not infrequently
mentioned on the same gaming websites.

But for a minute there, I confess I was a little concerned.

Anyway, to get back to the interview with Dom:

ME: What do you enjoy most about Mah Jong?

DOM: Handling the tiles.

ME: Pardon?

DOM: The FEEL of the tiles. Its a tactile, kinesthetic
pleasure. [Kinesthetic: adj. Of or relating to bodily reaction or
motor memory] I like to rub the tiles.

At this point I thought it might be a good idea to shift
gears, but the only thing I could think to say was,
"Lookcows!" and there werent any around.

I felt I had gone as deeply into the subject as I could in
good conscience. There the matter rests.

Since
Ma is playing Mah Jong,
Pa wants all chinks hung.
We get rice chop suey each night,
Chinese cooking you should see how Pa is looking.
Ma wears a kimono
She yells "Pung!" and "Chow!"
Ma left dishes in the sink
Pa went out and killed a chink
Ma plays Mah Jong now.

PATTER:

If you want to play the game
Ill tell you what to do
Buy a silk kimono and begin to raise a queue
Get yourself a book of rules and study till
its clear,
And youll know the game when youve
got whiskers down to here.
After that you buy a set and oh how you get
stung,
Then you start in guessing which is Chow and
which is Pung;
And when youre exhausted and you're shaky
in the knees,
Then you know why people say "Darn clever,
these Chinese!"

REFRAIN:

Since
Ma is playing Mah Jong,
Pa wants all chinks hung.
We get rice chop suey each night,
Chinese cooking you should see how Pa is looking.
Ma wears a kimono
She yells "Pung!" and "Chow!"
Ma left dishes in the sink
Pa went out and killed a chink
Ma plays Mah Jong now.

Ive got a wonderful mother,
But of late shes not the same
Things were O. K. until the day
Ma learned a new Chinese game.
China youre poison to me,
You broke up my whole family

REFRAIN:

Since
Ma is playing Mah Jong,
Pa wants all chinks hung.
We get rice chop suey each night,
Chinese cooking you should see how Pa is looking.
Ma wears a kimono
She yells "Pung!" and "Chow!"
Ma left dishes in the sink
Pa went out and killed a chink
Ma plays Mah Jong now.

If you want to play the game
Ill tell you what to do
Buy a silk kimono and begin to raise a queue
Get yourself a book of rules and study till
its clear,
And youll know the game when youve
got whiskers down to here.
After that you buy a set and oh how you get
stung,
Then you start in guessing which is Chow and
which is Pung;
And when youre exhausted and youre
shaky in the knees,
Then you know why people say "Darn clever,
these Chinese!"

REFRAIN:

Since
Ma is playing Mah Jong,
Pa wants all chinks hung.
We get rice chop suey each night,
Chinese cooking you should see how Pa is looking.
Ma wears a kimono
She yells "Pung!" and "Chow!"
Ma left dishes in the sink
Pa went out and killed a chink
Ma plays Mah Jong now.

Mamma
makes papa use chop sticks,
All the knives and forks are canned

Poor
papa frets, each meal he gets,
Splinters all over his hand.
Her fingernails were like tacks
So Pa clipped them off with an ax

REFRAIN:

Since
Ma is playing Mah Jong,
Pa wants all chinks hung.
We get rice chop suey each night,
Chinese cooking you should see how Pa is looking.
Ma wears a kimono
She yells "Pung!" and "Chow!"
Ma left dishes in the sink
Pa went out and killed a chink
Ma plays Mah Jong now.

If you want to play the game
Ill tell you what to do
Buy a silk kimono and begin to raise a queue
Get yourself a book of rules and study till
its clear,
And youll know the game when youve
got whiskers down to here.
After that you buy a set and oh how you get
stung,
Then you start in guessing which is Chow and
which is Pung;
And when youre exhausted and youre
shaky in the knees,
Then you know why people say "Darn clever,
these Chinese!"

REFRAIN:

Since
Ma is playing Mah Jong,
Pa wants all chinks hung.
We get rice chop suey each night,
Chinese cooking you should see how Pa is looking.
Ma wears a kimono
She yells "Pung!" and "Chow!"
Ma left dishes in the sink
Pa went out and killed a chink
Ma plays Mah Jong now!

ONE READER
WRITES

Very early on in my career as a Distinguished Journalist, I
discovered there were two things I could not say or my mailbox
filled up instantly with invective, abuse, and insult: 1) at
least SOME cats have character flaws, and 2) the scientific
underpinnings of astrology may not be all that solid. In fact, a
column I did about cats nearly 20 years ago brought me so much
demented hate mail that I printed up a form letter: "Dear
Sir or Madam: I regret to inform you that an escaped mental
patient is sending out letters under your signature (see
attached)." Unfortunately this just brought me more hate
mail, so I stopped.

Anyway, this week I discovered that there is a THIRD thing I
cant say without unleashing a flood of angry
correspondence: "Its no big deal if your oldies
station changes its format." Thats what I said last
week, and MAN did I hear it. Sixteen furious emails, plus a
couple of the more-in-sorrow-than-in-anger variety. One gentleman
chose to express his displeasure in verse, which I would share
with you if he had not rhymed my last name with "have,"
"laugh," and "rave." Just for the record, my
last name terminates with a "w," not a "v,"
and "have," "laugh," and "rave"
dont even rhyme with each other. Most of my correspondents
marshaled their arguments in prose, and there were two points
that kept coming up over and over: I am a moron, and all music
since 1970 (or, in the case of a few more adventurous souls,
1975) stinks.

The only exception to this was a friend of mine (who wishes to
go unnamed: Ill call him "Pashwari," after the
entrée I had tonight at the Indian restaurant), who took issue
with my cavalier attitude but did not resort to either insults or
poetry. He wrote:

"No, you still don't get it. The point is not that the
oldies are gone or that advertisers have stopped targeting us
because we're over 49. The point is that the baby-boom
generation, which is now largely between 49 and 59, is the
LARGEST group of people in America. This is not analogous to the
people born in 1920 who felt neglected in 1969 when they were out
of the desirable demographics. Those people were in the minority.
And throughout history, people over 70 have been in the minority.
Until now. We're living longer, well into our 80's. And there are
a lot of us over 49. Which means that MOST of the American
population has been marginalized."

ME: Well, so what?

PASHWARI:
When I say we've been marginalized by popular
culture I mean that we're out of the loop when it
comes to water-cooler conversation. I can't
discuss last night's episode of American
Idol because I didn't watch it and wouldn't
tune in if you paid me. Add to that rap music,
Survivor and all the other crap, and
I'm almost like an alien in my own country.
Perhaps what I'm getting at is more of a question
than a statement. I could sum up by saying,
"What happens to a country and its culture
when the majority of the population is
marginalized and excluded?" I don't think
you disagree with me at this point; you don't
care. Which is great for you. I think apathy is
the best defense, especially since there's not
much we can do about it.

ME: Well, Apathy is ALWAYS the best
defense, except in the case of flesh-eating
zombies. Then you need a tire iron, and
youve got to aim for the HEAD.

PASHWARI: Perhaps
I care more about this stuff than most people.
I've been working in television in one way or
another since 1976, right up to 1999. It's weird
to think that not only can't I get work in the
industry for being too old, but I'm not even a
consumer anymore. I have to reiterate, however,
that this isn't just about me. "Wah-wah,
they took away my radio station." Because of
the science of demographics, this kind of thing
is happening to a hundred million or more of us.
I find that a little scary.

PASHWARI: Not
true. The science of demographics wasn't
"invented" until around 1969. Prior to
that, broadcasters got plain ratings from the
research companies that said only how many people
were watching/listening to a given program. TV
was full of variety shows like Ed Sullivan, Red
Skelton and Jackie Gleason. There were also the
country comedies like Beverly
Hillbillies, Petticoat
Junction, and Green Acres. I
can tell you that Beverly Hillbillies
ran for something like 8 years and it was rated
the number one show for most of those. Bear in
mind that with only three networks to choose from
it was very possible to get a 50 share (50% of
America tuning in to the same show at the same
time). No TV shows come close to that today
because there are so many other choices. When
demographics were introduced it gave the
broadcasters additional information about their
programming. Not only did they know how many were
watching, they could tell the age, gender, income
level and geographic distribution of the
audience. They found that Ed Sullivan, Jackie
Gleason and Red Skelton had huge numbers of
viewers but they were mostly older. They also
found that Beverly Hillbillies and
the other country comedies were very popular
among people in rural areas but didn't do well
among affluent city-dwellers. These shows had big
audiences but undesirable demographics. Look at
the 1970 TV schedule and ALL of the shows I
mentioned above were gone. In the time slot that
had been home to Jackie Gleason for a decade they
put All In the Family, an urban show
that skewed young. Since that time demographics
have gotten more and more sophisticated to the
point where they break it down into so many
categories it makes the Grammy awards look
simple. A given program might have good ratings
among women 18-24, or males 24-25, or
urban-dwelling foreign-speaking childless couples
with a median income of $100,000 or more. I'm not
exaggerating.

ME: If advertisers dont appeal to
people in their fifties, arent they just
poking themselves in the eye? It seems to me
thats an awful lot of people with an awful
lot of disposable income to spend.

PASHWARI: Nope.
Even though it's counter-intuitive, statistics
show that people over 49 are not good customers.
It seems like we spend money like water but they
don't want us because we have most of what we
want by now, we're brand loyal, and we're not
easily swayed by advertising. (I'm sure there are
exceptions to this but we're talking generalities
here, by definition.) If the U.S. population is
close to 300 million and more than half the
population is over 50 we're talking about some
150,000,000+ people who don't participate in
popular culture.

He makes some excellent points (I had to omit many more
because of space limitations (and also because they make me look
really stupid)), and none of it rhymes. I cant really
dispute any of this. As Mr. Pashwari says, its not so much
that I disagree, its that I dont care. If 150,000,000
Americans dont participate in pop culture, thats okay
with me. Maybe its even a good thing. But as Mr. P.
demonstrates, I dont have any idea what Im talking
about. AND (dont forget!) I dont care, either.

Ignorance and apathy. They have been my constant companions
through life and they rarely let me down. Im not about to
abandon them now, believe me.

DECAYIN TO THE OLDIES

Not one... not two... but FIVE emails landed in the Grimshaw
inbox this week suggestingno, pleadingno,
DEMANDINGthat I deal with the demise of WCBS-FM, which was
apparently the last oldies station in the Milky Way galaxy. I had
no idea there was a shortage of oldies stations. I doubt if I
have run down the radio dial any time in the past 20 years
without encountering "Stairway to Heaven" and /or
"Hotel California" and /or "Sweet Home
Alabama," all of em older than dirt and still getting
programmed relentlessly all over the place. I wrote back to one
of my correspondents with this observation and she responded that
those are all songs from the SEVENTIES and nobody was playing
songs from the SIXTIES and was I just going to write another
stupid article about COW BRAINS or was I going to DO something
about it?

Well, Mooooo.

The main reason Im sticking with cow brains is that I
just. Dont. Get. It. I have never had a favorite radio
station. Yes, I listened (and listen) to the radio, but
thats because I have to listen to something, or else
Im stuck listening to my own thoughts, and believe me, that
wouldnt be pretty. There were and are a lot of songs from
40 years ago that I like, but there are way more that I
dont. I would rather stick slide down a cheese grater than
ever listen to "Indian Reservation" by Paul Revere and
the Raiders, for instance. Maybe WCBS-FM never played it, but I
wasnt willing to take that chance, so I never tuned in.
When I was growing up, the top forty station with the most
powerful transmitter was WABC, out of New York. WABC played all
the hits all the time, which in practice meant you would hear the
weeks number one song at least 5 times in the course of two
hours. Very useful if the number one song that week happened
"Louie Louie" and you were trying to figure out if the
lyrics really were as smutty as your sisters boy friend
said (actually the theme from "Mr. Ed" is smuttier),
but otherwise it was annoying. Did I say annoying?
Man! If you didnt live through the golden age
of top 40 radio, you have no idea what annoying
means. When a song you hated went into the top 5 the only way to
escape it was to TURN OFF THE RADIO. Kids, this was in an age
when aaaalllllll the stations were top forty or close enough (or
else they played GROWN-UP music and therefore were totally beyond
the pale), and cars generally did not have tape players yet. And
when they did, the tapes tended to jam and tangle and explode out
of the suddenly defunct machine in a blast of accordion pleats.
There were entire weeks when your choice was either silence
(unthinkable!) or "Horse with No Name." *Shudder*

And yet, people are really upset. My friend Dave is upset
about WCBS going south. Hes got an enormous music
collection and any time he wants to hear "Indian
Reservation," its just a click away. Of course
hes not just lamenting the loss of a radio station;
hes upset because he and I turn 50 this year and that means
we are no longer demographically attractive to advertisers.
"They wont target us any more," he said.
"You mean," I said, "it bothers you that low-lifes
in the ad business wont try to get us to buy worthless
garbage now?" "Yes," he said. For Dave, WCBS is
just a symbol of a greater existential dilemmathe idea that
in a very short time were going to look even more like
wrinkled shapeless blobs than we already do. Like Naugahyde
hassocks left out in the yard all winter. In fact, well be
worse than Naugahyde hassocks. They dont need Depends.

But the rest of my correspondents are not despondent. They are
FURIOUS that THEIR MUSIC is now off the air. Folks: the Sixties
got rolling 45 years ago and although I havent checked
this, Im pretty sure that I could have listened to a lot of
radio stations in 1965 without finding the greatest hits of 1920.
People who were teenagers in 1920 probably enjoyed their music
just as much as people who were teenagers in 1965. And I bet they
hated the music of 1966 as much or more than the erstwhile teens
of 1966 hate the music of 2005. They even wrote crabby letters to
the editor about it. They just didnt happen to think they
were ENTITLED to a station devoted to 40-year-old music.

So what should you do? You should PAY MORE ATTENTION TO MY
COLUMN!! Just a few weeks ago I gave you people a website where
you could download 365 really cool songs and things, including a
bunch of 8 year-olds screaming "I like cheese!" for
three solid minutes. This ALONE is worth more than every single
song released commercially in 1966, and 1966 was a great year for
pop music. I have no idea what the WBS playlist was like but I
can guarantee this wasnt on it.

When I was 12 years old, the 100th
anniversary of the incorporation of my hometown was celebrated
with a gala 2-hour ceremony in front of the municipal building.
President Johnson had been invited but did not attend, although
he did send his regrets; maybe he heard that the music was going
to be provided by the members of the Shriners All-Star
Celestial Orchestra, one of whom played a banjo made from a cigar
box. They played a number called, or at any rate with the
refrain, "OBrien Is Tryin to Learn to Talk
Hawaiian." Between songs, local politicians made speeches,
and the whole thing climaxed with a time capsule being sealed in
the foundation stone of the newly erected library (since the
library was already up and open for business I guess it was a
faux-foundation stone). The mayor held up all the objects being
sealed into the time capsule and explained what they would reveal
about the residents of Little Falls circa 1967 to the residents
of 2067. I remember only one object: a can of aerosol cheese.

Aside from the cheese, Calvano and Picarillo
and I did not think much of the selection when we discussed it
over the next few days, but we loved the concept of sealing a lot
of cool stuff in a time capsule for future generations to
discover. We talked about it in Calvanos basement, or in
the belly of the World War I Tank Memorial in the park, or
accompanying Picarillo on the way to the drug store- his mother
sent him out for various embarrassing ladies
products about six times a day. At first we debated what we
would include without regard to the size of the capsule or our
ability to obtain the items we would seal within it for
posterity. "A Corvette," Calvano suggested at one
point. "A red one, with white walls, definitely. And a
couple of episodes of either Combat or Rat
Patrol. Which means a TV to show them on, too, of
course..."

"A big one," said Picarillo, nodding,
"Like Dr. Fergussen has. Its got the rabbit ears built
RIGHT INTO THE SET." I shook my head in disbelief and
whistled. We had no conception of how an episode of Rat
Patrol might be storedin film canisters? On
reel-to-reel tape? On punch cards? But there was no doubt
that at least one should be preserved for all time.

We list after list, arguing whether to include
Picarillos copy of the Zager and Evans hit single "In
the Year 2525;" we agreed it was the greatest song ever but
Picarillo had played it so much that it sounded like it had been
sandpapered, in addition to which the needle got stuck on the
last chorus so you had to either throw a shoe at the record
player or actually get up and lift the tone arm manually.
"What does it say about us if we leave the Children of the
Future a defective record?" asked Calvano. "Nothing
good. It would be better to include a second can of
calamari."

Eventually we concluded that our time capsule
should be no larger than the one sealed up on Little Falls
Centennial Celebration Day, and that had been roughly the size of
a milk crate. We thought about including some personal items like
the pickled cow brain Picarillo kept in a jar on his night stand,
but upon further reflection figured that maybe that would tell
future generations a little too much about us. We certainly
intended to seal up some of the rubber spiders we made with the
Mattel THINGMAKER™, because we were very proud of our
custom blend of black and red plasti-goop which, poured into the
mold at exactly the right moment, gave our spiders a unique
marbleized look.

If the opportunity to stock a time capsule
arose, everything on our ultimate list was already in our
possession (like the spiders) or easily obtainable (like the
calamari, or Calvanos brothers copy of the October
1965 Cavalier Magazine with the Yvette Mimieux cover). We stored
the objects on hand in one of the countless drugstore bags in the
Picarillo household.

But we knew, of course, that the opportunity
would never arise.

And then, amazingly, it did. A housing
development went up on the property beside the abandoned junkyard
we called Tomato Smash at the edge of town, where we
spent far too much time. Most of the houses were in various
stages of construction. We made friends with the rummy whod
been hired to watch the unfinished structures when there was no
work underway, and he let us eat lunch inside them and listen to
ball games on our transistor radios, which is what we were doing
when Calvano, halfway through a peanut butter sandwich,
announced: "There are SPACES between the outside and inside
walls!" And even between the walls of adjacent rooms. True,
there was insulation and wiring and plumbing in those spaces...
but there was still plenty of room to STICK A TIME CAPSULE within
most of them, and in that room, a couple of the walls had been
partly sealed alreadywe could just slide our capsule behind
a slab of drywall and in all likelihood it would go undiscovered
for decades or even millennia.

"What do we need, besides Yvette?"
said Calvano.

"Ill go down to the Valley Spa and
get some wax fangs," I said. "Picarillo, you get the
squid."

We separated and met up in Tomato Smash about
an hour later. Calvano had been unable to get the Cavalier
because his brother Duff was at home. We either had to wait for
Duff to leavewhich could be days, now that he had a lava
lightor do without it. We did without it. Picarillo held
out the bag and I slipped the fangs into it. Calvano chatted up
the rummy while Picarillo and I made the drop. It was
exhilarating, as though we had thrown a switch and sent our time
capsule a thousand years into the future.

When we got back to Picarillos house, his
mother said, "Michael! Whats all this junk?" She
rattled a paper bag. "Rubber spiders! Fake vomit! What did I
tell you about that fake vomit? What happened to my things from
the drug store?"

"Uh, I dunno, Ma..."

She sent us back to the drugstore to get the
missing items. "Picarillo, youre an idiot," said
Calvano. It was a gruesome list. Two rolls of toilet paper! Pink
plastic hair curlers! Tampons!

"Maybe we should go back to the house and
just switch the bags," I said, but we were already half way
to the drugstore by then.

"Nah, itll be okay," said
Calvano. He was looking into the middle distance and having one
of his visions. "Someday 80 years from now someone may be
stuck on the toilet in that house, and theyll run out of
toilet paper, and in frustration they kick a hole in the wall,
and miraculously, they will find toilet paper."

"Also tampons and pink plastic hair
curlers."

"The calamari is there, too, and the
fangs," Picarillo added.

"It will be a gift from the distant
past," said Calvano.

"What I dont get," I said,
"Is, why would they kick a hole in the living room
wall?"

For a second Calvanos eyes clouded over.
Then his incredibly efficient mental paper shredder kicked in. My
question vanished from his brain in a blur of mental confetti,
and his eyes cleared again. "A gift from the distant
past," he murmured.

EMMA: Because I dont have it. Oh, listen,
you told me there was this movie star in the Golden Age of
Hollywood who was so short he had to stand on a milk crate to
kiss the leading lady? And if they were walking side by side, she
had to walk in a ditch? Who was that?

ME: Alan Ladd. He was 52".

EMMA: Who? No, no, this was a MOVIE STAR.

ME: Alan Ladd was a big starhe was
"Shane." He was in "This Guns for
Hire." He, um...

EMMA: Yeah, whatever. Well, if you remember the
name of the REAL movie star, let me know. Oh, listen, Devra is on
the train too. We have some more stuff to tell you. Call her on
your three-way calling thing so we dont have to pass the
phone around.

ME: I dont have three...

EMMA: Yes you do! Ive seen it on your
phone bill.

ME: You look at my phone bill??

EMMA: I wanted to see if you made any calls to
those smutty 900 numbers. The month I looked you didnt. But
you have three-way calling.

ME: Are you sure?

EMMA: Just hit the link button on
your phone, and then dial Devras number, and after she
picks up hit your link button again, and then we can
talk like civilized humans...

EMMA: It was supposed to have already happened,
but there were no witnesses...

DEVRA: Except Bryant...

EMMA: Who doesnt count, so it
wouldnt have been legal.

ME: This is creeping me out. It would be sort
of cute if you were in, oh, 5th grade...

EMMA: Weve selected music for the
ceremony. Its The Bear Necessities from
"The Jungle Book."

ME: Look, this is a little too sick for my
paper...

DEVRA: No, its okay! Black Bear is a
girl! She used to wear a girl bathing suit even, for the better
part of seven years...

ME: How old are you two?

EMMA: We want to have the wedding at this bar
on Third Avenue. The Black Bear Lodge. We asked...

ME: Youre 21.

EMMA: And I need 40 dollars.

ME: What happened to your job?

EMMA: I quit.

ME: It was a great job! It was The TODAY Show!

EMMA: No, it was OUTSIDE the Today Show. I got
tired of getting up at 4:30 in the morning and going down to the
Today Show studio to wave a sign for a dog food company. I did it
for three days and thats enough. And Al Roker GROPED me.

ME: Oh please.

EMMA: He did. All these people stick out their
arms so hell TOUCH them, but I DIDNT stick out my
arm. It turns out if you DONT extend your arm he will grope
it.

DEVRA: And the sad part is, there were all
these people there who wanted to be groped who werent.

EMMA: Reba MacIntyre was there one morning
singing. All these Reba MacIntyre fans were there. And you know,
on the other side of the dog food company sign I wrote I
(heart) Devra, So I could whirl the sign around when it got
on camera and Devra would see it and go awww, and
these country music fans said, "its spelled
R-E-B-A." And I said, Im a corporate
shill, leave me alone. They got really mad. They thought I
said something dirty. Oh! And theres a FRENCH BULLDOG in
the neighborhood. They have tongues that hang out all the time,
and theyre all smushy, but very dapper. They walk with a
STRUT. Wait, waitscary homeless man!

ME: Whys he scary?

EMMA: Hes SINGING.

ME: But so what?

EMMA: Let me explain then: You know Nothing.
NOTHING.

ME: So explain it then.

EMMA: That was the explaination. We saw Clint
Eastwoods directoral debut.

ME: "Play Misty for Me."

EMMA: Aside from THAT, you know nothing.
Anyway, the girl reminds me of the nanny in
"Pinnochios Revenge."

EMMA: And I got the special edition
"Beaches" DVD. Theres an interview with the girl
who played the young Bette Midler. She played Blossom in
"Blossom," too. I never saw the show but I remember you
spit out your soda one night when this commercial said,
"Tonight... on a VERY SPECIAL BLOSSOM..."

ME: Thats because they were ALL special.

EMMA: Devra and I are going on the Oregon
Trail.

ME: You mean the computer game?

EMMA: No, the real thing. In a car. And
well backpack through the rough parts. And then, in
October, were going to a Halloween party as Sacco and
Vanzetti. POST execution.

ME: Were they hung or electrocuted? I forget.

EMMA: Electrocuted. And I already have the hair
for it.

ME: Is that why youre doing it?

EMMA: No, of course not. Im a HISTORY
major. Katie Holmes...

DEVRA: Has a Herpie on her upper lip.

EMMA: Yes. On two different magazine covers.
Shes on a third one, but its all blurred there, like
they tried to fix it but they couldnt. She should go to the
NY Eye and Ear Infirmary to get it taken care of. My eye was all
swollen and I waited 5 hours to see somebody and then he told me
to put a HOT POTATO on it.

DEVRA: You were given the option of another
vegetable.

EMMA: True. Forty dollars. Remember. Must go
now.

TIME TRAVELERS
CONVENTION UPDATE

I did not personally matriculate at the Massachusetts
Institute of Technology but my friend Dave Willinskys older
brother Tobys buddy Curt spent a couple of semesters there
before flunking out, so I have always considered it my
almost alma mater. Curt wore rimless glasses with
round lenses and had that impressive unshaven
Ive-been-up-36-straight-hours-cramming-for-my-post-Calculus-finals
look. The fact that he could pull it off without bothering about
the actual cramming just made it all the more impressive. I
considered applying to MITI was sure I could manage that
unshaven genius look at least as well as Curt, once I started
shaving more than twice a weekbut in the end I traded a
couple of Larry Niven paperbacks ("Ringworld" and
"Neutron Star") for Curts MIT sweatshirt and left
it at that.

Shortly after acquiring the sweatshirt I read an article in
"True: The Mens Magazine" about the madcap
science students at Cal Tech, which included their instructions
for attaching 60 feet of aluminum foil to a helium-filled weather
balloon so it would show up on radar and cause the Strategic Air
Command to send jet interceptors. As I have written here in the
past, my attempt to duplicate this experiment was unsuccessful,
but the experience was almost enough to get me to switch my
science-school allegiance and get a Cal Tech sweatshirt. Almost.

This past week Ive had to rethink my loyalty to MIT yet
again. As you may have heard, on May 7th a Time
Travelers Convention was held on the MIT campus. According
to the organizers, you would only need to have one time
travelers convention, ever, since as a time traveler you
could always attend it as often as you like. It was held in the
East Campus courtyard and got rolling at 8 PM. There were live
bands and refreshments and "awesome lectures." (Says
here).

Unfortunately, there were no time travelers. What went wrong?
Speculation is rife, let me tell you. The erudite website
"PaleoJudeaica" ticks off six possible reasons why time
travelers avoided the MIT bash, including "Time travel
really is impossible" (reason 1), "Time travel is
possible, but the many-world's interpretation of quantum physics
is correct, and time travelers who went to the convention started
new branches of the multiverse," (reason 3), and
"Someone in the future is going to throw a better party for
time travelers," (reason 6).

I think number 6 is almost, but not quite, on the money.

Just how cheap and easy would time travel have to be for
anyone in, oh, 3,400,057 AD to think, "Hey party at
MIT on May 7th, 2005East Campus Courtyard!"
ANSWER: Doggone cheap and easy.

Like, totally free and utterly effortless. But lets
assume it is. Lets say in 3,400,057 AD its easier to
zip back to 2005 AD than it is in 2005 AD to turn on the TV and
find an episode of "Law and Order." If you can go any
place in the world at any time in history, why would you want to
go to THIS particular wingding? No matter how easy it is to get
there, once you get there, youre THERE. In the East Campus
Courtyard at MIT. Even if you just hang out there for 2 hours,
its still 2 hours out of your life that youll never
get back. And if youre from the future, you already know
that the organizers called it a rousing success since they had
"awesome lectures." I mean, apparently they also had a
keg, but still, at the risk of offending the fine folks at my
almost-alma mater, that doesnt seem like much of an
incentive to travel through the eons. As the Radio Free Wyhtl
site so eloquently put it, "You can throw a party for Tom
Cruise, but that doesnt mean hell show."

My real guess is that reason (1) is correct and time travel is
impossible. I wish it were otherwise. If time travel were
possible, all parties would be great parties, because youd
be able to find out in advance if they werent, so you
wouldnt have them. "The beer bash next Wednesday is
canceled because only 6 people will show up and one of them is
that smelly kid from Kappa Delta."

On the other hand, if you cancel the party, then it
doesnt happen. Therefore you didnt find out in
advance what a drag its going to be. So then you have it
anyway. But then the smelly kid shows up and... Well, you see
where this leads. A kind of temporal feedback loop with some frat
boy with bad breath winking in and out of existance forever. None
for me, thanks.

CORRECTION: A couple of weeks ago I wrote that
my friend Paul Proch posted a picture of himself
on eBay in which he was "wearing a ski cap,
goggles, and a smoking jacket, with his arm
around a stuffed gorilla." In fact, writes
Mr. Proch, "...I wasn't wearing a ski cap
and goggles in the gorilla photo; I was wearing a
fez with an eyeball on it that I bought in Las
Vegas, and Goofy Glasses." The
Delaware Valley News extends its apologies to Mr.
Proch and his stuffed gorilla.

365
Reasons to be Cheerful

A couple of years ago the warranty on my
appendix expired and during my recovery, unable to amuse myself
in my usual fashion (bar fights, shark baiting, etc.), I had
quite a bit of time to kill. I killed a lot of it (or anyway gave
it a good kick in the shins) on the World Wide Web. One afternoon
while I was annoying strangers on the Internet by pretending to
be a Nigerian banker, I stumbled across the 365 Day Project.

Ah! Just typing the words "365 Day
Project" suffuses me with a warm glow.

No, wait. Its not a warm glow, exactly,
its more a kind of... bloated, uncomfortable feeling, sort
of a stomach cramp, like I overdid it with the moo shoo pork at
the Chinese restaurant tonight. Which, come to think of it, I
did. Whoa!

Excuse me, Ill be right back.

Okay. Much better.

Now Im typing 365 Day Project
again, and this time it is a warm glow, all right, without a hint
of indigestion. The 365-Day Project was the brainchild of one
Otis Fodder, who posted a bizarre mp3 every day in 2003. My
appendix threw its hissy-fit in June, when the Project was
already half over, but the first thing I did every morning was
download the latest offering and then hit the archives for
treasures Id missed. It took me about two months to catch
up.

What do I mean by bizarre mp3?
Obscure songs from past decades; weird childrens records;
forgotten commercials; demented performances lifted from high
school marching band LPs; oddball demo tapes; kids singing along
with their record collections; promotional flexi-disks, amateur
cassette releases, berserk karaoke interpretations, and
thats not the half of it, or even a 30th of it.
There are a few celebrities scattered here and thereWilliam
Shatner reciting "Rocket Man," Orson Welles flipping
out during a blown take for a canned pea commercial, Van Morrison
getting out of his contract for Bang Records by delivering 28
hastily improvised 2-chord songs like
"Ringworm" ("I heard you got / Ringworm /
Its a very common disease / Ringworm..."). But for the
most part, the 365 tracks are by people youve never heard
of, some of them talented, many of them not, some of them utterly
charming, some of them seriously disturbed. I would have
mentioned this long ago and given it my highest possible
recommendation, but when the project ended the mp3s came
down and that was that.

However.

Its back. The whole thing. You can type http://www.ubu.com/outsiders/365/ into your address bar or just google "The 365 Day
Project," and youll get there. Its archived in
bi-weekly chunks and every track is copiously annotated so you
can download the entire project or browse around and just get the
stuff that sounds like its your cup of meat. And its
all FREE.

My friend Irwin Chusid, who used to program
this sort of thing on his now-defunct WFMU radio show
"Incorrect Music," liked to say, "This isnt
comedy, its anthropology," and he had a point,
although some of this stuff is incredibly funny. If I listen to a
couple of them in a row they sound like novelty records, but when
I let an hour or so of this material play while Im
balancing the checkbook and paying bills, it sounds like the
secret history of the 20th century.

Case in point: "What Would We Do without
Glass," by Herby and Elena Ayers, the selection for August 6th.
A little classic from 1951, enumerating all the wonderful things
made of glass, produced "by and for" the Glass Blowers
Union. It contains the line, "What would the neighbors do
without your television?"

This lyric probably makes no sense to anyone
born much later than 1950. I, of course, WAS born later than
1950much MUCH later, thank you and the line resonates
for me only because I grew up next door to a large family that
had no TV set, well into the 1960s. It was a middle-class
family, normal in every way except for the extraordinary absence
of a TV in the living room. This was so unusual that the kids in
the neighborhood imagined that they mustve belonged to some
weird religion that prohibited television. (In fact they were
Lutherans). When they eventually broke down and got a TV (around
1966) I think I made some sort of remark at the dinner table
about how they were FINALLY joining the 20th century,
because I remember my father telling me that on the contrary,
they had been the first family on the block to own a TV, and the
entire neighborhood used to congregate in their living room night
after night after night, people dropping by on any kind of flimsy
pretext and then staying to watch TV (and abuse their
hospitality) until the wee hours. When the TV gave out the
patriarch simply refused to get it repaired or replaced. This
little comedy was repeated with variations all over the country
in the late forties and very early fifties, and then everyone had
a TV set and folks stayed in their own living rooms and the whole
structure of community life was altered. The brief window of time
when there were just one or two TVs per block and a whole
neighborhood was crammed around it watching Milton Berle while
somebody adjusted the rabbit ears closed, and vanished without
leaving a trace in the popular culture of the dayaside from
a throwaway line in a goofy, privately distributed record that no
one heard for 50 years, until it ended up in the 365-Day Project.

I would suggest getting everything, even stuff
like the guy who sings "Stagger Lee" like a duck, and
the 8-year-old kids screaming "I like cheese!" for
three and a half minutes. There must be 50 hours of
mouth-dropping material here (theres a high school marching
band version of "Lady Madonna" alone that lasts for 20
minutes). And it will all sound just as fresh in 20 years as it
does today.

Good taste is timeless.

NIGHT OF ENCHANTMENT

A couple of weeks ago I mentioned that my
friend Paul Proch had put himself up for auction on eBay. I
dont mean he was offering to live in the basement and keep
the floors waxed and the plants watered for life if you won the
auctionhe was offering himself for one night only. As he
put it:

"Your NIGHT OF ENCHANTMENT will commence
when you rendezvous with me, PAUL PROCH, at a convenient
pre-arranged location. Then you will accompany me, PAUL PROCH, to
the garden spot of the world  BROOKLYN, USA  for the
opening night world premiere of "Theatre for the New
Ear" at the ST. ANNS WAREHOUSE Theater..."

"Theater for the New Ear" is the
classy title for a pair of radio plays written and directed by
the Coen Brothers (Fargo, O Brother Where Art Thou) and Charlie
Kaufman (Being John Malkovich, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless
Mind). Opening night tickets were not easy to come by, since
(despite the Brooklyn location) the cast included Meryl Streep,
John Goodman, Philip Seymour Hoffman, Marcia Gay Harden, and
Steve Buscemi, but since Paul is Charlie Kaufmanns
erstwhile writing partner AND the guy who drew all those pictures
used in "Eternal Sunshine," he managed *cough* to snag
some.

(Paul also did the illustrations for *cough
cough* my last three books, available at extremely reasonable
prices at the Delaware Valley News office).

The description of Pauls proposed Night
of Enchantment continues for several paragraphs, concluding,
"Then, weary and languid as your NIGHT OF ENCHANTMENT nears
its conclusion, I will leave you with a waggish "adieu"
and your treasured memories of a NIGHT OF ENCHANTMENT. After
that, you're on your own. After all, I have to get up and go to
work thin the morning. I need my restIm not a
machine, you know. In addition, your entire NIGHT OF ENCHANTMENT
will be fully documented by PAUL PROCHs personal team of
photographers (his sister and her husband)."

I ask youhow could anyone (at least
anyone female between the ages of 25-50, as specified in the ad)
resist the urge to bid on this auction? Which, by the way, was
illustrated with a photograph of Paul wearing a ski cap, goggles,
and a smoking jacket, with his arm around a stuffed gorilla,
captioned: "Thats right, one lucky lady could be
this gorilla for a price!"

And what was that price? I hope youre
sitting down. The Night of Enchantment went for $306.34. There
was a spirited bidding warby which I mean that at least two
different females were vying for the right to PAY Paul for the
pleasure of his company. And even though it took place online,
and the weapon of choice was money, it surely qualifies as an
example of Natures most awesome spectacle: a GIRL FIGHT!
Ideally, of course, both girls in a girl fight should be wearing
black underwear, and begin the fracas by throwing table lamps and
high heels at each other and gradually close the distance until
theyre grappling hand to hand, and in the course of the
struggle they rip each others blouses to shreds which is
how we find out about the black underwear, and then they tumble
into a nearby shallow canal, and the busty redhead yells,
"You keep your hands off him! Hes mine, you
bitch!" And then the incredibly hot blonde chick gives her a
shove and, um... er...

Well, this auction wasnt like that,
exactly, but its the same basic idea.

The winner was one Kathy Newland of Moore,
Oklahoma. And since among the many many conditions, disclaimers,
and caveats Paul included in his auction was, "The date does
not include your transportation to the initial, agreed-upon
convenient meeting location, or your return. So if youre in
California, or Guadalajara, or Moscow, or some other ridiculous
place outside of New York City, youll have to get here and
back on your own," she paid for her own transportation from
Oklahoma and hotel accommodations. (I suspect this means that her
out-of-pocket expenses for this Night of Enchantment added up to
more than $304.34).

Kathy, it turns out, is a married mother of
three and possibly the worlds biggest "Eternal
Sunshine of the Spotless Mind" fan, having seen it at least
40 times. Her husband of 20 years not only approved of her
bidding on the auction but encouraged it. Im not sure if he
saw the picture of Paul with his arm around the monkey or not.

So how did the date go? Did Paul (as his
auction notice promised) at least buy Kathy dinner at the
Brooklyn Diner on 57th Street in Manhattan?

PAUL: We ate at the Heartland Brewery, next to
the Empire State Building.

ME: What did you have?

PAUL: Nachos and beer.

ME: I see. And did you actually take her to the
play, or just rent some videotape ?

For some reason Paul cut the interview short at
that point, although later he told me that they "did
so" go to the play. "Afterwards, Charlie saw me and
came over and talked to us for a while; then he asked if we
wanted to stay for the opening night party, which was held in the
lobby with food and open bar. Kathy got to meet Meryl Streep,
Steve Buscemi and Peter Dinklage. Then around 1:00 AM she got in
a cab, went back to her hotel, and left for Oklahoma the next
morning. She said she had a wonderful time (even though we never
made it to the Brooklyn Diner) and that it was a dream come
true."

Noticing that he totally sidestepped the
videotape question, I felt it was necessary to interview Kathy to
get the real story. She backed up Pauls claim about really
going to the play and the after party, as well as the
wonderful time.

ME: Did Paul show you his stuffed monkey
collection? If so, which was your favorite?

KATHY: Unfortunately I didnt get to see
it, not enough time. Actually, I didnt know that one
existed. Did see the gorilla on eBay though.

ME: You ended up winning the auction with a bid
of $306.34. Were you prepared to go higher? If someone had bid
$306.35, would you have just said to hell with it? How much WOULD
you say a date with Paul is worth?

KATHY: Honestly, I would have bid until I won.
Paul is priceless....and the sweetest I might add.

ME: Did Paul make you pay for the nachos?

KATHY: No, he wouldnt let me. They were
good nachos too!

ME: Did any of the celebrities you met try to
borrow money from you?

KATHY: No!

ME: Not even Meryl
Oh-goodness-I-left-my-purse-in-the-dressing
room-could-you-loan-me-$30-for-cabfare Streep? How much did
Meryl Streep try to borrow from you, and has she made any effort
to pay it back yet?

KATHY: [politely suggests this was covered by
the previous question and answer]

So everyone seems to be happy with the way
things turned out. And why not? If we deduct the cost of the
nachos (and forget about airfare and hotel rooms and stuff) the
actual cost of a date with Paul works out to about $293. Get out
your check books, ladies! Mr. Proch is still available!

MEET THE BEETLES

One day I had healthy raspberry bushes. The
next day I had nothing but cringing, twitching, shell-shocked
raspberry bushes. The Japanese beetles had arrived and were
skeletonizing the leaves.

The bushes shook wildly under the impact of
hundreds of beetles carrying on in the most shameless fashion
imaginable. The branches were bouncing.

When your standard Japanese beetle wants to
have a good time, he doesnt curl up with a book and a plate
of cheese and crackers. He parties. Im talking about
serious partying here, none of this PG-13 stuff. These bugs may
wear their skeletons on the outside, but thats all they
wear, if you get my drift.

So I bought a Japanese beetle trap, the deluxe
kind, with both the floral lure and the sex lure, and come
sundown I had myself a bag full of beetles.

The box says, "They fall in and die,"
but apparently nobody told these beetles. The beetles in my bag
were still having a party. They were trying to bust the lease.
And more beetles were clamoring to get in. They were hitting the
bottom of the bag with little mop handles and brooms.

One of the beetles escaped from the bag but
returned a few minutes later with a case of beer. The sex lure
and the floral lure were working overtime. Beetles from out of
town, beetles from the next county, beetles with Boston accents
were showing up in my yard. I had to buy six more traps to handle
the overflow. That made seven sex lures and seven floral lures,
all doing that voodoo that they do so well.

An hour later, 60,000 beetles pulled up in a
car with Arizona plates. I secured the door and windows as best I
could and tried to sleep, but the beetles outside were going
crazy. They kept playing Benny Goodmans "Sing Sing
Sing" over and over again at a painfully high volume.

Sometime before dawn I went downstairs for a
glass of water. There was a beetle talking on my phone. He saw me
and dropped the receiver, scrambling for a hole in the baseboard.
I picked up the phone. On the other end a tiny insect voice was
saying something in Japanese. I hung up.

By 10 AM boatloads of beetles from the home
islands were steaming up the Delaware, millions of tiny camera
shutters clicking away at the Jersey riverbanks. They poured up
the embankments and across the railroad tracks, heading straight
for my yard. I screamed and barricaded myself in the dining room.

"Hey!" yelled one beetle. "We
need MORE TRAPS!"

I hid under the table. Hours laterI had
managed to doze off despite the incredible racketa beetle
tapped me on the shoulder and told me there was a cop outside who
wanted to talk to me. I went out. It was like a scene from
Fellinis "Satyricon," only with more antennae.

"These your beetles?" asked the cop.

"No," I said.

"Well, theyre in your yard.
Neighbors are complaining. And you know none of these beetles are
wearing any pants?"

I nodded and stumbled back to my table.
"Excuse me," said the beetle who had awakened me,
"But were just about out of ice." I didnt
reply. "Say, you look a little down in the mouth, bub. Why
doncha join the party?"

"I thought you guys were supposed to fall
in the bag and die."

"Huh? Well, sure, sure. Of old age!
Cmon, get out there and have some fun. Hey, check out the
thorax on that one! Hubba hubba!"

He shot back out to the party and Im
still here, under the table, listening to that Gene Krupa drum
solo for the 600th time. Say what you want about
Japanese beetles, but they know a good tune when they hear one.

This Years Correspondence

The year several people (=2) contacted your reporter to
compliment him on the new photo which accompanies this column.
"It makes you look like a normal person," gushed R.R.
of Holland, and Dorothy M. of Flemington also waxed enthusiastic
about it, although she doesnt go quite so far as to say it
makes me look normal. Im sorry to report that all this
gushing and waxing has little to do with the way I really look;
the image has been manipulated by the madcap graphics department
at the Del Val News, I suppose with one of these new-fangled
computer thingees, to make it appear that I have a receding
hairline. All in good fun, of course, but I think its time
to restore my wavy chestnut brown hair. Or failing that, bring
back the picture with the goatee and beret.

As more and more people grow familiar with their cyber-mail
programs, and perhaps the English language, I receive fewer and
fewer cryptic-but-charming emails. Just one real puzzler this
year: "Liked the pineapples and glad clean.
After." Thats it. I guess my correspondent just had
time to hit "Send" before the meds kicked in. It came a
week or so after my "Ask the Pineapple Core Expert Guy"
column appeared and I asked for further elaboration, but it was
not forthcoming, alas.

Three people sent me a series of questions for the "Ask
the Expert Guy" feature. Im afraid the two of these
were unusable because they related to anatomical and/or ethnic
subjects unsuitable for a family newspaperin fact they
would have been a little over the top for
"Hustler"but I used the Ask the Olympic
Expert Guy questions submitted by Dave Pratt in the
September 2nd column. The September 2nd
column was actually entitled "Ask the Perogie Expert
Guy," because I figured, you know, it would be sort of
funnier that way. I havent heard a peep from Mr. Pratt
since then, so maybe not. Oh well.

As always, I received nearly as many letters about the columns
I didnt write as for the ones I did write. Why, asked J.G.
(no relation) of Reiglesville, did I not write about the flood a
few weeks back? Because I wrote about the flood in September and
my contract limits me to one flood column per year. Fact. The
civil defense folks required me to sign a refusal to
evacuate form. It included the name of my dentist, in the
event that dental records were required to identify my bloated
festering corpse. I was pretty sure it wouldnt come to
thathence my signing the refusal form and allbut I
did put my guitar on the couch, just in case.

Prunee [at least thats what it says on the email address
to the left of the "@"] wanted a column about the low
carb diet. Not an intrinsically bad idea, but Prunee sent me a
follow-up seconds after the next edition of the paper hit the
stands asking, "What happened to the low carb column?"
More inquiries followed at weekly intervals. For a while I toyed
with the idea of running a column consisting entirely of
Prunees increasingly furious emails about the nonappearance
of the low carb column, but in the end, I didnt. Other
rib-tickling suggested topics from readers included out-sourcing,
Chinese restaurants that serve bad food, and fat people at high
school reunions.

One topic no one suggested was cats. And a good thing. As it
happens, this past year I ran a column about bathing my
daughters cats and my-oh-my did I get mail. "Anyone
who suggests such a thing as a flea blow torch to
remove fleas from a cat has no business writing for a newspaper,
even yours," began one letter on the subject. Though not a
typical one, since everything was spelled correctly and the
writer lined up 26 words in a row without a single obscenity.
Cats are truly the third rail of American and you write about
them at your peril, even in Warm & Fuzzy mode, which believe
me I was.

In re my column about "MacArthur Park" and the
meaning of same, some folks wanted to know where they could get a
copy of the bootleg Frank Sinatra version I quoted ("Someone
left the cake out in the rain / that coo-coo nutty
cake..."). Well, its out there, but since its a
bootleg (theres an official Sinatra version on
"Trilogy" but without the interpolated lyrical changes,
so its totally worthless) (Just kidding) (cough),
youre going to have to deal with some puh-ritty shady
customers to get your hands on it. You certainly cant get
it from me, burned on a CD-R, with a pretty spiffy slim line case
with a cover designed by me, even if you send me well concealed
cash, a money order, or a check for one dollar and a stamped self
addressed envelope. No siree bob.

After the column about my friend Paul Proch, who illustrates
my bookswhich are, by the way, on sale for a pittance in
the Delaware Valley News office, signed (and for a
pittance!) F.K. of Clinton wanted to know if Paul really
exists, or if hes just somebody I made up "like
Calvano and Picarillo." Oh Ye of little faith. As I write
this, Paul has just auctioned himself off on eBay, or rather he
has auctioned off a date with himself. Go on eBay and put
"Paul Proch" in the search engine if you dont
believe me. An evening with Paul went for $306.51 after some wild
bidding in the final seconds. I know after you ladies see the
photo of Paul with his stuffed monkey youre going to be
kicking yourselves that you didnt get in on the action. A
complete account of the "date" itself as soon as I hear
about it, you bet.

TASTE
TEST

I ate lunch at the same place every day when I had a summer
job at the Passaic County ID Bureau in Patersonat the Falls
View Diner, which was just four or five blocks from the office. I
usually ate alone but every so often one of the other worthless
teenage drudges would tag along, and within a couple of weeks
everyone at the Bureau knew where I spent my lunch hour and that
I always ordered the same thing: two Hot Texas Wieners All the
Way with an order of french fries, and a chocolate milk. If
Id hung a right when I got to the Falls View, I would have
been on McBride Avenue, where there were three other Hot Texas
Wiener emporiumsLibbys, The Olympic, and
Duckysbut I did usually not hang a right when I got
to the Falls View because I much preferred the Falls View Hot
Texas Wiener sauce to both Libbys and the Olympics.
Duckys sauce was excellent, but they had shoe string fries
instead of the more robust variety at the Falls View, and their
chocolate milk was, to be frank, a disgrace. I suspected that
they watered it down.

I say I did not usually hang a right, but from time to time
the Assistant Head of the ID Bureau would get a hankering for Hot
Texas Wienersand who doesnt? and when he did,
he wanted them from the Olympic. There was a little too much
cinnamon in the Olympic sauce for my taste. I did not like going
the extra block and a half to the Olympic, and I did not like the
Assistant Head of the ID Bureau.

Half an hour or so after I got back from one such lunch run, I
was shading the thorax on a cockroach I had just drawn when the
Assistant Head (the name plate on his desk read Ass.
Head, a rare instance of bureaucratic Truth in Advertising
as well as the source of his indelible nickname) suddenly loomed
over me. "I dunno who you think youre kidding,"
he said, "but its not me. Im on to you."

"????" I said

"You think I cant tell the difference between a Hot
Texas Wiener from the Olympic and one from the Falls View?"

"Bernard," called the Head of the ID Bureau,
"Would you sit down and leave the kid alone? I need them
cockroach pictures for my talk tonight."

"Frank, Im just saying," said Bernard,
"Young Mister Rembrandt here pulled a fast one today but
hes not getting away with it."

"Pretend youre a grown up," said Frank.

"Im just SAYING," said Bernard. And then, to
me, "This isnt over."

"Yes it is," I said. I placed a sheet of transparent
plastic over my drawing and traced it. My illustrations were
intended for an overhead projector.

"Its over when I say..."

"BERNARD! Let him draw my cockroaches, would you
please?" Bernard threw up his hands and returned to his own
desk until I had completed my graphics assignment and was
searching through the files with the aim of removing convicted
felons from the jury duty lists.

"The way I see it, you owe me three dollars and 57 cents,
because I am not finishing that lunch because it aint what
I asked for. Thats the way I see it."

"The way I see it, its exactly what you asked for,
and I dont care if you finish your lunch or not."
Bernard made a humph sound and went to Franks
cubicle. A spirited discussion ensued. Usually spirited
discussions between Frank and Bernard concerned Bernards
nameplate and Frank would insist that the county budget would not
allow him to order a new plate ("Ts cost
money."). This time the subject was Hot Texas Wiener Sauce.

"Well, what was the bag? Was it an Olympic bag or a Falls
View bag?"

"Olympic, but..."

"But what? He bought a Falls View hot dog and then walked
to the Olympic and had them put the Falls View hot dog in the
Olympic bag just to make you miserable?"

"Well, its crazy, but its what he DID! And
its not the first time!"

"All right," said Frank. He put on his coat and got
into his car and drove down the mean but oh-so scrumptious
streets of Paterson. He returned about an hour later with a brown
paper bag, and ordered one of the trustees to rinse out some
specimen jars.

"So you think you can tell the difference between Hot
Texas Wiener sauce from the Olympic and the Falls View and alla
these place, huh?"

"Are you kidding?" said Bernard. "Absolutely.
And when I do, I want a T!"

"We shall see," said Frank. "Maybe if you get
it right I get you a T, and if you get it wrong, we
remove the period." He took the four freshly rinsed plastic
jars and numbered them "1" through "4" with a
marking pen. He took them into his cubicle and when he emerged a
moment later, they each contained a few ounces of Hot Texas
Wiener sauce. "Im the only one who knows which sauce
is in which jar. Lets go." He tossed a plastic spoon
to Bernard. Everyone in the office had now stopped work and was
watching the taste test.

"I want a glass a water," said Bernard, "to
clear my palate between each taste."

"Yitzchak, get him a glass of water."

Bernard sampled the first sauce. "Falls View." He
sipped. Number two: "Ducky." This was a little more
tentative than his first identification. Sip. Number three:
"Olympic." sip. "No need to try the last..."

Frank tossed a memo pad on the desk. It read: "All Sauce
from Falls View."

The applause and cheering was deafening. "Maybe we should
get a retodded monkey up here, " said one of my co-workers.
Somebody pounded my desk in appreciation, which knocked a couple
of books to the floor. Unfortunately, I kept my secret supply of
bags from The Olympic hidden between those books, and now they
were neither secret nor hidden.

Frank picked up the phone and spoke to the dial tone.
"Cancel that retodded monkey," he said.
"Weve already got plenty, thanks."

Getting a Handle on the Van

The Custom Neon Sign Shop van was purchased for
just under 100 dollars, and among the many reasons for this
excellent price was the condition of the back doors. The latch
didnt function correctly all the time, which meant that on
occasion we would be driving along and suddenly the doors would
fly open. We could prevent this by locking the doors, but
sometimes when we locked them we couldnt unlock them unless
I grabbed the handle and pushed the right hand door upwards with
all my strength, bracing one foot against the curb to get enough
leverage, while Mulberry Street Joey Clams grabbed the handle of
the other door and pulled it down and to the left, at the same
time twisting the key in the lock. We got to be pretty good at
this, but even so it often took two or three tries to synchronize
everything. One morning I came into work and found that Mulberry
Street Joey Clams had soldered the back doors shut. "In the
first place, we dont hafta open the doors that much anyway,
and when we do, itll be less trouble to bust them open with
a crowbar and resolder it than do alla this yankin and
dancin every time," said he. But when the time came to
test out this theorywe were picking up a couch from his
cousin in Staten Island and bringing it to his mothers
apartment in Little Italyit turned out that he hadnt
soldered the doors at all. He had welded them together. We beat
the sides of the van with the crowbar to make ourselves feel
better and then tied the couch to the roof. This made us
dangerously top-heavy crossing the Verrazano and at one point the
wind nearly picked us up and deposited us in the Bay. "We
coulda died there," said Mulberry Street Joey Clams as we
took the Belt Parkway Ramp.

"Well laugh about this later, after
we change our underpants," I said.

"You know, a normal guy such as me says
something a normal guy would say, like I just did, and YOU start
talking about underpants! What does underpants have to do with
anything? Underpants! A normal guy would just say,
Thats right, Mulberry Street Joey Clams, we coulda
died there. Not you. Talking to you is like talking to the
Liberti kid, but hes got that metal plate in his head from
when the fire hydrant blew up last year. No more talking about
underpants!"

I recalled that Mulberry Street Joey Clams had
reacted badly to the mention of undergarments in the past, so I
dropped the subject and we delivered the couch without further
incident. But we now had a van with an interior we could reach
only by crawling over the front seats (the side door had been
concaved by a Buick long ago and was as immobile as the back
door). We didnt use it much for Custom Neon Sign Shop
business; mostly we moved articles of furniture from the home of
one relative of Mulberry Street Joey Clams to the home of
another. We had to tie whatever we were transporting to the roof.
"Well, the thing is," Mulberry Street Joey Clams would
explain to his baffled relatives, "were using the
inside for somethin else right now. You know what Im
saying?" Since (like Mulberry Street Joey Clams himself) all
of his relatives were genetically incapable of saying, "No,
I have no idea what youre saying," this usually ended
the conversation.

A couple of weeks later we were parked outside
the falafel place on Spring Street when this punk broke into the
van to steal the radio. Mulberry Street Joey Clams and I were
arguing about somethingpossibly underpantsand we
opened the doors and the kid was disconnecting the speaker wires
under the dash. "Ugh," he said as Mulberry Street Joey
Clams pulled him out of the van and dangled him off the pavement
by the collar of his jacket. "Youre a moron,"
said Mulberry Street Joey Clams. "Cant you read?"
We had slapped one of those Car Has No Radio stickers
on the drivers side window. But the punk knew nobody puts
that sticker on the car unless theres a radio inside.
Car Has No Radio and Car Has Radio mean
exactly the same thing even though they sound like they
dont, just like I could care less and I
couldnt care less or Kick Me and
Dont Kick Me.

"Check the radio."

I turned it on. "The speaker on your side
is okay, he disconnected mine."

"Lucky for you," said Mulberry Street
Joey Clams. "If youd messed up my speaker so I
couldnt hear the Julius Larosa Show..." His eyes
clouded over at the thought, and then he released the punk with a
shove.

But the near-loss of Julius Larosa sent
Mulberry Street Joey Clams into a frenzy of demented van security
measures. "Get this," he said the next morning. "I
jerry rigged the inside door handles so theyll fall off if
somebody in the van tries to open the door without following the
correct protocols."

My head swam, mostly at the idea of Mulberry
Street Joey Clams using protocols properly.
"What are they?"

"You gotta tighten these screws here
before you open the door. Then you loosen them again before you
shut the door. Its fool proof." He demonstrated by
getting in the van. "Now, I do not tighten the screws. Watch
what happens when I try to open the door." The handle came
off in his hand. "Now, I... uh..." he looked around for
the screws. "All right. Well get more screws. The
point is, anybody tries to steal the radio, theyre trapped
in the van." I got in the other side. "Close the door
very gently. I loosened the screws on that door, too." We
were going to get some screws at the lumberyard on Thompson
Street but when we hit a pothole on the corner of Houston Street
the handle fell off my door. "Okay. Thats good to
know. So as soon as we get in the van, tighten the screws,
an then just loosen them when we get out."

"Whats your thought on how we get
out?"

"Well roll down the windows,"
he said, and began to roll his down, but as soon as it went down
about three inches that handle came off in his hand as well.
"Huh. Apparently you start foolin with these screws
all kinds a things can happen," he mused.

"Apparently. So I guess I wont be
able to roll down my window, either."

"Well, lets not jump to conclusions.
When we get to the lumberyard give it a shot." A few moments
after we got to the lumberyard the handle to my window was
resting in the palm of my hand. We gestured to several passersby
to please open our doors from the outside; in time 12 very
long minutesbecause minutes spent trapped in a van with
Mulberry Street Joey Clams are measured like dog
yearssomeone did. We screwed the handles back in place; I
convinced Mulberry Street Joey Clams that the possible benefits
of loose inside door handles were outweighed by the definite
problems and he tightened them up, though they still felt wrong,
somehow. We didnt realize how wrong until a few days later
when we emerged from Buffas luncheonette (tuna salad
platter including choice of soda or Yoo Hoo: $2.35) and saw our
punk had just one more connection to sever in order to free the
radio from the dashboard. "Nnnggh!" cried Mulberry
Street Joey Clams, and he and I tried to open our doors without
unlocking them. Suddenly we were both sitting on our rear ends,
staring at the outside door handles we had just yanked off the
van. It took the punk a few beats to understand what was
happening but once he did, he acted with commendable coolness and
hot-wired the van. He gave us a friendly wave as he drove off.

"Lets call the cops," I said.
"How far is he gonna get in a van with CUSTOM NEON
SIGN SHOP in two foot letters all over it?"

"Well, lets think about
this..."

"I know you dont like to call the
cops on principle, but..."

"Well, the principle is, there are some
ownership issues that might complicate things..."

"You paid a hundred bucks for that
van."

"Correct. But the thing is, the guy I paid
the hundred bucks to may not exactly have had legal title to the
van at the moment I paid the hundred bucks. Possibly."

I know that acid reflux (so-called)
is annoying and uncomfortable, but is it actually dangerous? I
ask because Ive had a little heartburn and I can handle it
fine. But then again, unlike (apparently) 99% of the people
today, I am not a major wuss.

(signed)

NOT A MAJOR WUSS

DEAR NOT:

Sure, tough guy, so ahead and walk it off.
Im sure youve seen the TV commercials and you know
what this stuff can do to your esophagus over time. Maybe
youre thinking youve got a cast iron esophagus, but
probably not. And heres something else to think about: the
esophagus is not the only part of your body in danger. One of
these nights youre going to be asleep, and this time it
might not be a simple case of heartburn. This time the stomach
acid could back up all the way into your skull and completely
dissolve your brain. Does this happen often? No. Does it happen?
You bet. In fact, you ARE betting. Youre betting on your
brain. And the odds are getting shorter all the time. Or, no,
wait. The odds are getting LONGER all the time. Well, wait.
Whichever one means the odds are getting better that your brain
will dissolve, thats the one we mean.

*

DEAR ACID REFLUX EXPERT GUY:

I dont know what you think youre
doing, but youve been giving out a lot of crazy advice to
your readers. Last week you told some guy that if he wanted to
relieve his acid reflux problem, he should stand in his front
yard and swing a bag of chicken parts around his head three
times. You told another reader she could cure her acid reflux by
blinking repeatedly and spitting between her knees. I think
youre losing your mind.

(signed)

DISTURBED

DEAR DISTURBED:

Thanks for writing. We value our readers
opinions and insights.

*

DEAR ACID REFLUX EXPERT GUY:

Is there any advantage in suffering from acid
reflux? We just hear about the bad things. Surely NOTHING is all
bad.

(signed)

Cant Be All Black and White

DEAR MOONCHILD:

I was about to say that there is no possible
advantage to acid reflux, but it occurs to me that if you had an
ice cube blocking your windpipe and no one was available to
administer the Hiemlech Maneuver, a momentary attack of acid
reflux might melt the ice cube enough to dislodge it and save
your life.

*

DEAR ACID REFLUX EXPERT GUY:

I have to read a Henry James novel for my
English class this semester. Is there a really short one?

(signed)

HOPING THERE IS A REALLY SHORT ONE

DEAR HOPING:

"Daisy Miller" and "Washington
Square" are both quite shortso short, in fact, that
your instructor may consider them novellas and insist on
something longer, in which case you might consider either
"The Europeans" or "A London Life," both well
under 200 pages.

*

DEAR ACID REFLUX EXPERT GUY:

I have acid reflux. I was born with an extra
toe on each foot, as well. Do people suffering from extra digits
have a higher incidence of acid reflux, and (B) would having the
extra toes removed alleviate the acid reflux problem at all?

(signed)

MEANT TO LABEL THE FIRST QUESTION
"(A)" BUT FORGOT

DEAR MEANT:

Its hard to say for sure. Many
celebrities with extra toesJennifer Anniston, Brit Hume,
the late Queen Motherin fact do suffer from acid reflux,
but no comprehensive studies have been done correlating extra
toes with acid reflux. And of course many celebrities who have
had their extra toes removed (J. Lo, Kofi Annan, and several
Legends of Mexican Wrestling) later deny that they ever had extra
toes to begin with. Obviously much work needs to be done in this
field.

*

DEAR ACID REFLUX EXPERT GUY:

How come nobody ever heard of acid
reflux until the pharmaceutical companies invented drugs to
treat it? And if it did exist before then, what was it called?

(signed)

SUSPICIOUS

DEAR SUSPICIOUS:

Despite your well-founded suspicions, acid
reflux has been around for millennia, albeit under a variety of
names. Sometimes it was called "heartburn." To
Victorians it was known as "The Vapors." Others simply
called it "Chester."

*

WINNER
OF THIS YEARS THE LIGHTER SIDE OF
ACID REFLUX HUMOR CONTEST: Once again,
George F. Macoy takes the honors for his wacky
definition: "Reintarnation: being reborn as
a hillbilly." Congratulations to Mr. Macoy.
To all those who write in to complain that Mr.
Macoy wins every year for this joke, all we can
say is, there is a much better chance of someone
else winning if someone else sends in an entry.
It is true, as several people have pointed out,
that the joke doesnt appear to have much to
do with acid reflux, but Mr. Macoy points out
that acid reflux is not limited to the
cultural elites. A hillbilly can suffer from this
malady just as easily as a captain of business or
a lawyer or something." So true! Its a
point that cant be made often enough, and
Mr. Macoy should be proud of making it for 13
consecutive years now, just as we are proud of
honoring his making that point for those 13
consecutive years.

*

DEAR ACID REFLUX EXPERT GUY:

In the movie "The Fly," when Jeff
Goldblum eats that guys foot, he sort of drools on the foot
and the foot dissolves and more or less inhales it. Two part
question: Is that stomach acid hes using to dissolve the
foot, and if so would that be acid reflux, and is this in fact
how flies do eat feet, or whatever things it is that flies eat?

(signed)

GUESSING THAT THIS TIME HOLLYWOOD ISNT SO
FAR OFF

DEAR GUESSING:

I spoke with the House Fly Expert Guy, who
reports: "Flies dissolve their food with powerful enzymes,
not with stomach acid. They dissolve their food because they
dont have teeth." So in real life there would be no
acid reflux involved. But the House Fly Expert Guy things
its possible that Matter Eater Lad, in the DC comic book
"Legion of Super Heroes," may possibly be able to eat
normally uneatable substances (including steel doors) because of
extremely powerful stomach acid, as well as very strong (and
presumably acid resistant) teeth. Thanks for writing.

Crazy
About That Taft!

This was actually going to be sort of an Easter
column, because I was going to write about those little Easter
chicks that you eat (the candy ones, I mean), but every time I
sat down to write it, the enormous face of William Howard Taft
would appear superimposed over my monitor, making concentration
difficult to say the least.

I didnt ask for this, believe me. If
youre going to superimpose yourself over my monitor, I
would rather you be, say, Selma Hayek than William Howard Taft.
But we dont choose these things, and Taft it was.

I confess a certain interest in Taft. He was
our fattest president by several orders of magnitude (326 pounds
at his recorded peak) and also the last one to sport facial hair
while in office, unless you count Jimmy Carters terrifying
1970s side burns or Richard Nixons permanent five
oclock shadow. Im not sure why, but after World War I
you just couldnt have a president with hair on his face.
Harry Trumans margin of victory in 1948 was precisely the
width of Thomas Deweys skinny little mustache.

Taft looks like he belongs to an earlier era
than not only his successor in the White House, Woodrow Wilson,
but his immediate predecessor, Teddy Roosevelt, as well. He looks
like a bigger, bulkier version of the pre-modern era baseball
players from the 1890s, with their handlebar mustaches and
striped jerseys. This is the way presidents SHOULD look, as far
as Im concerned. The founding fathers seem so far removed
in time and spirit you can almost picture them in togas, and the
post-Great War presidents all seem too... presidential, more like
the presidents played by Henry Fonda in the movies than real
presidents (although come to think of it, I guess I can picture
Bill Clinton in a toga, too).

But Taft... now THATS a president. You
can look at his face and think, "theres a man who
could say by George! and not sound like a dork."
Which is what you want in a president.

But its not necessarily what you want
staring up at you when youre trying to write about Easter
chicks. After this happened two or three times I had to suspect
that my subconscious was telling me that the Easter chick column
was just not happening. But why was my subconscious using William
Howard Taft to tell me this? I mean, why NOT Selma Hayek? Why
not, for that matter, just announce "The Easter chick thing
isnt working. Abort!" and leave Taft out of it? Why
does the subconscious communicate in these stupid cryptic ways,
like an annoying girl friend who wont come out and tell you
what she wants for her birthday and then throws a fit when you
get her the wrong thing?

It took a couple of days, but eventually I
remembered that I had recently had a WILLIAM HOWARD TAFT DREAM.
And, I recalled, it was hilarious. Now I didnt remember the
dream itself, only that Id had it, so I wasnt sure
exactly why it was hilarious, but now I felt that my subconscious
was at least making an effort to communicate lucidly. "You
wont even have to WRITE this weeks column," it
was saying. "Ive done all the work for you! All you
have to do is REMEMBER it!"

Of course its usually futile to try to
remember a dream. The effort often shreds the fragile tissue of
the memory into unrecoverable fragments, and then where are you?
Youre stuck writing "Ask the Acid Reflux Expert
Guy" twenty minutes before deadline, thats where. So
you just do your best to keep the right receptors open and hope
the memory will gel before you have to start googling
"Nexium."

And I know youre thinking that it
didnt work, and youve been reading the dreaded
"column about how I couldnt think of an idea for the
column" (or as James Lileks calls it, "The Nuclear
Option"), but youre wrong. Less than an hour ago, the
ol subconscious came through and the memory of the
hilarious William Howard Taft dream came flooding back. It turns
out it was a musical dream. A song, to be precise. It was a song
about William Howard Taft. To the tune of... (Wait for it!)...

Theme from Shaft.

(Cough).

As long as the channels of communication were
open, I took the opportunity to speak directly to the
subconscious.

ME: Why you!! (Grabs Subconscious by the
neck. Both fall backwards over the sofa). From now on you just
butt out! ILL write the columns by myself!

SUB: Oh yeah? You and what morbidly obese
ex-president?

At which point I pretty much ceased all
communication with my subconscious. In fact, if anyone out there
is in need of a new subconscious, please contact me care of this
paper. Ive got one available. Cheap.

Calvano and I were terrible athletes, but Picarillo was far,
far beyond terrible. He was so uncoordinated that, in motion, he
seemed like some sort of molluska large squid
maybethat had been crammed into jeans and sneakers and set
loose in the playground. Or perhaps like two large squids, with
very bad skin.

We were playing one-pitch kickball that morning, and as usual
Picarillo had been picked last. Picarillo was almost always
chosen last for the teams that formed at recess. Most kids hated
having Picarillo on their team, but Calvano and I lived for it.
Not because Picarillo was our friend, but because we felt that
his incredible ineptitude made us look good by comparison.
Needless to say, nobody ever said, "Hey, those two guys look
good compared to that other guy." They said, "Hey,
those three guys stink." But we didnt realize this for
years. Anyway, Picarillo was up, Steve Retzer was pitching the
kick ball, and no one on the field had moved into a defensive
position because Picarillo always struck out swinging (if there
was something to swing) or kicking (if there was something to
kick). But the law of averages finally caught up with Picarillo.

His foot hit the ball with a resounding wump! and
the ball sailed away. It was foul, of course, but it had some
real velocity. We all paused. It looked like it was going to
bounce off the red door of the kindergarten, and it would have if
our principal, Mr. Lux, had not opened the door just in time to
catch the ball squarely in the face. Even though Mr. Lux was a
good 60 feet away, that wump seemed far louder than
the initial wump. Mr. Lux stood for a second with a
look of utter bafflement on his face, and then his glasses slid
off his faceone half slid off the bridge of his nose to the
right and dropped to the ground, the other half slid left and
dangled by the ear piece for a few beats before falling away. He
tried to take a step forward and instead executed a rubber-legged
stagger that would have done Buster Keaton proud. Then his knees
buckled and he flopped face down on the playground.

"Whoa," said Calvano. Several teachers ran over
towards the fallen principal and Mrs. Herdman, whod been
making some pointless notations on her clipboard, said
"Whats going on over there?"

"That was incredible, Picarillo," said Sindorf.
Sindorf was the oldest kid in the class by a considerable margin.
Hed been in the sixth grade for at least 8 years and was
older than most of the teachers. "You better hightail it,
though. If Lux pulls through, hes gonna be furious. And if
he dont, his relativesll hire somebody to kill
you."

"Fact," Calvano agreed. Picarillo snuck around the
edge of the playground and hid in the janitors room in the
basement.

Meanwhile, several of the lady teachers helped Mr. Lux to his
feet. The knees of his trousers had been blackened and shredded
by the unforgiving playground surface, and he was already
developing a matching set of black eyes.

"What happened?" he gasped.

"The boys kicked the ball right in your face," said
Miss Threlfall.

"Not boys," hissed Calvano. "BOY. One kick, one
boy..."

"It may have been an accident," said Miss Threlfall,

"Of course it was an accident," said Mrs. Herdman.
"It was Picarillo. He couldnt hit a barn from two feet
away."

Calvano inserted himself into the circle of teachers and
proctors. "Mr. Lux! Mr. Lux! Is Picarillo in trouble?"

"No, no," said the principal. One of his eyes was
swelling shut. "It was a meefer."

"A what?" said Calvano.

"Moofah," explained Mr. Lux, and then he allowed
himself to be walked to the nurses office, all the while
muttering "meefer" and "moofah" and various
other words that didnt exist. At lunchtime our teacher,
Mrs. Ruffalo, informed us that Mr. Lux had gone home for the day
but would be fine. "Wheres Picarillo?" she asked.

"Hes hiding in the janitors room," said
Calvano.

"Well, go tell him that hes not in any trouble and
he should get back to class."

Calvano and I went down to the janitors room, where
Picarillo and the janitor were playing hearts. I was about to
give him Mrs. Ruffalos message, but Calvano cut me off.
"Bad news, Picarillo. Mr. Lux is BLIND."

"Aw no!" said Picarillo.

"Fact. In a way youre lucky. They thought he was
gonna die. Theyre operating on him now. Maybe he wont
be permanently blind. Anyway, youre in a lot of
trouble."

"Dont listen to him, Picarillo," said the
janitor. "Its the bunk."

"Well see whats the bunk," said Calvano.
"Cmon, Picarillo. Miz Ruffalo says you gotta come back
to class." The janitor shook his head in disgust as we lead
Picarillo away. "This afternoon, if Mr. Lux survives the
operation, hes gonna have a list of things you gotta do if
you want to stay in school."

"What??"

"Im just telling you what they told me,"
Calvano declared solemnly. "I dont know what its
gonna say, all I know is, if you dont do exactly what it
says, you get shipped off to military school." He paused.
"And its a GIRLS military school."

"They cant do that!"

"Hes BLIND, Picarillo," Calvano reminded him.
"So he can do whatever he wants."

That afternoon Calvano showed up at the Picarillo home with
the first of Mr. Luxs orders. "I know this sounds
crazy," said Calvano, "but Mr. Lux says here...
Picarillo must wear his pants backwards
tomorrow."

"What??"

"Im just the messenger," said Calvano.
"Geez, Picarillo, its a lot better than going to a
GIRLS military school!"

And so the next morning Picarillo arrived at school with his
pants on backwards. This did not go unremarked upon by the staff,
and Picarillo was ordered to change in the boys room, which he
did, even though he objected strenuously: "I dont
WANNA go to girls military school!" Picarillo often
made demented statements like this, but Mrs. Ruffalo sensed the
hand of Calvano in there somewhere and got the whole story from
Picarillo. So Mr. Lux issued no more orders regarding
Picarillos pants, and Calvano spent some quality time after
school that week. "How could you do something like that to
your friend?" demanded Mrs. Ruffalo. "What POSSESSES
you??"

"Some men see what is, and ask why?"
Calvano explained. "I see what might be and ask, why
not."

ME: How did you host an Oscar Party in your dorm room? You
dont have any money.

EMMA: The college paid for it.

ME: What do you mean they paid for it?

EMMA: I told them I was going to have an Oscar party and they
gave me money to buy chips and things. It was free.

ME: This is the college I send your tuition check to? Because
if so, I cant help thinking that some small but not
inconsiderable percentage of that check apparently goes to paying
for chips and things...

EMMA: [makes universally understood hand sign for yak
yak yak.]

ME: No, seriously, I...

EMMA: You should write your beloved Dr. Phil. Dear
Doctor Phil, I am upset because my daughters college
subsidizes wholesome parties in her dormitory. Im sure it
would be much better if they like STOLE the chips and had the
party in some crack house. Sincerely....

ME: Im not saying...

EMMA: [Makes yak yak yak hand sign]. I know. In
YOUR day, you had to buy your OWN chips and walk ten miles to
school everyday, in a blizzard.

ME: Well, how did the Oscar party go?

EMMA: Natalie didnt win. That UGH won. She overacted.
Natalie should have won. But the party itself was epochal.
Im going to be on the front page of the Washington Square
News.

ME: Why? Did it turn into a riot?

EMMA: No. Devra and I watch Jeopardy every day.
Were going to get on it. Absolutely. We sent in our
applications already. This is NOT going to be like the Who
Wants to Be a Millionaire auditions. They were fixed. [She
plops down on my bed, then suddenly screams and jumps off].
Aaaaagggghhh! Aaaaggghh!! Omygawd I breathed in KNEE SWEAT!

ME: What?

EMMA: You hid that THING you wear on your knee when you jog on
the bed and I inhaled your disgusting KNEE SWEAT!

ME: My Knee Support Bandage? I didnt hide it. It was
right out in the open...

EMMA: They should make you put FLARES around it! Ugh! Ugh!

ME: Why do you think the Millionaire auditions
were fixed?

EMMA: Yes, quickly change the subject from your disgusting
knee sweat thing. There was a written test.

ME: So?

EMMA: So they had all these SCIENCE QUESTIONS.

ME: So?

EMMA: So it was FIXED. I cant DO science questions. I am
a very one-dimensional intellectual. Speaking of one-dimensional,
did I mention Cate Blanchette stole the Oscar from Natalie? Oh
yeah. Hey, talk about how horrible Britneys new video is.
Im against it on principle. Half the video is her in a
HUMMER flying through the clouds. Its like a Care Bears on
acid. Its disturbing and stupid. Quote me.

ME: Hold on. Disturbing and stupid. Got it.

EMMA: Theres this girlyou should probably put
asterisks or dashes instead of her nameooh, wait. Change of
subject. We go to karaoke every Wednesday at San Marcos. They
give me free Diet Cokes and free mozzarella sticks because we
bring so many people. I ask all these people on IM and they come
so the place is always jumping because of us. Hence free
mozzarella sticks et cetera. My online community is sprawling.
Ive been practicing my secret song for three weeks for
Karaoke. I think 2 more weeks and I can unveil it. Oooh, and
Jocelynyou can put asterisks for HER, tooshe did
Ashley Simpsons "Pieces of Me" at karaoke and she
was actually worse than Ashley Simpson. TRUE. Wait, you can write
her name.

ME: Well, who was the other girl I was going to put asterisks?

EMMA: Goodness what a splendid sentence. Whats your
first language?

ME: Hey

EMMA: That was also Jocelyn.

ME: But you said I could put asterisks for Jocelyn TOO. So
that means...

EMMA: [makes yak yak yak hand sign].

ME: But... Okay. Whats your secret song?

EMMA: Fifty Cents "Inda Club."

ME: Is that Indie like independent
or...

EMMA: No, its INDA as in IN DA.

ME: Spell, please.

EMMA: You are sooo out of it.

ME: Um. Lets get back to your Oscar party. How many
people were there?

EMMA: 65.

ME: Good grief. Did you know them all??

EMMA: No. There were a lot of weird film school people there.

ME: Who invited them?

EMMA: We had fliers everywhere. It was the best party of my
career.

ME: And NYU gave you 200 bucks for this thing. That works out
to something like... um... Just over two dollars per guest.

EMMA: Whatever. Anyway, we watched the Oscars and Natalie
lost...

ME: No, nowait a minute. A bag of potato chips costs
like $1.49.

EMMA: How interesting. So anyway, Chris Rock was awful. And
Jamie Foxx! Did you see "Ray?" Theres NO PLOT.
Its just him bobbing his head around for 2 hours and every
so often he shoots heroin. But then the REAL Ray Charles died so
they HAD to give him the Oscar. If "The Aviator" had
won best picture I would have died. It was two and a half hours
too long.

ME: How long is it?

EMMA: Two hours and thirty seven minutes.

ME: I want to get back to the chips. NYU gave you enough money
so everybody at the party could have had their own bag of chips,
with about $50 left over.

EMMA: Believe me, everybody did NOT get their own bag of
chips. I was talking about "The Aviator" being too
long. We went to "The Aviator" with Fink.

ME: Fink?

EMMA: Its his name.

ME: F-i-n-k? His name is Fink?

EMMA: Yes. Its not his NAME name, though. Anyway, every
time there was a sex scene he went to the bathroom.

ME: Why?

EMMA: We DONT KNOW. Fink ghost hunts. He goes around
California looking for ghosts, he talks to them so he can take
pictures of them.

ME: Has he taken any pictures of them?

EMMA: He has this picture he says has a ghost in it but I
cant see it. He says you have to open your mind. Hes
an idiot. There are no ghosts.

ME: Im glad to hear you say that...

EMMA: If there were ghosts Marlon Brando would have talked to
me by now. Q.E.D.

Pickle
Right Side Up

Im not sure how many handstands I did on
Thursday night, but it couldnt have been as many as it
seemed. And although I should beand AM, dont get me
wronghappy that I can do a handstand at all at my advanced
age (which we will just say is a good days drive north of
25), I have to admit I was disappointed that they werent
better.

But nowhere near as disappointed as my yoga
teacher. Well, disappointed might not be the word.
Furious would be better, but it doesnt capture
the overwhelming sense of sorrow at my less-than-perfect
alignment while my head is down and my feet are up. "Work
those legs as soon as youre up! Bring the toe-pads
back!"

You cant fake the toe-pads back thing,
even though the human eye can not measure the nano-meter that I
can bring them back, because if youve engaged all the
toe-bringing-back muscles, you have a very obvious racing stripes
down the side of the calf. If that racing stripe isnt
there, you arent bringing the toes back, and if you
arent bringing the toes back, the arch isnt lifted
and the legs arent pulling you up against the force of
gravity and you might as well be right-side up and doing whatever
it is people who are right-side up do. Wearing pants, I guess.

So thats what I was doing for an
hour-and-a-half, although the clock said it was only six minutes
or so.

The stupid clock. And on my way home, I kept
thinking about getting those handstands right. I sat in the
McDonalds parking lot thinking about being upside down
while I consumed my cheeseburger. It was a chilly night and I had
my jacket zipped up all the way but I didnt feel the cold
because I was thinking Toe pads. Back! I was becoming
one with my toe-pads as my cheeseburger became one with me. Then
I had to forget about the toes briefly while I floored it home,
because the bran muffin I had become one with before class
decided it was getting kind of crowded in here, what with my
ever-expanding cosmic consciousness and the two cheeseburgers
with ketchup and pickles and the medium fries and all, and it
wanted out.

But a couple of days later in the
gymstill not thinking about my toes, mind youI was
loosening up a little on the mat, stretching out the hamstrings
and so on, and this teenage girl asked her boyfriend what I was
doing. "Just some warm-ups," he said, and she asked
home how come HE never did the kind of warming up I was doing,
and HE said, "You got a choice. You can be mostly strong or
you can be mostly stretchy. This guy is mostly stretchy, while
guys like me are mostly strong."

Well. I thought about just popping up, walking
over to the bench press, and totally humiliating this
dude in front of his chick by bench
pressing three times my body weight, but I decided against it
since I dont weigh 30 pounds and I can only bench press
about 90 pounds before I start going "Ummph! Gak!"
Instead, I slowly rolled over into headstand ready
position, where I remained gathering my strength and wits for
about 30 seconds, and moved into a headstand, which I held for a
good minute and a half, eyes closed to keep from being distracted
by the gaping faces of the now-chastised teens, andthis is
the part youve all been waiting forI pushed up into a
handstand from there, which I had never done before! I was pretty
cool about it, too, and didnt open my eyes for five seconds
or so. I expected to see the high school kid and his girlfriend
absolutely awestruck. In fact, though, I had an excellent view of
the window that looks out onto the parking lot, where they were
getting into a PT Cruiser, having apparently left the premises
shortly before I slowly rolled into the headstand ready position.
There was nobody else in the gym except an old guy in boxer
shorts and black socks, and he was trying to figure out how to
work the paper towel dispenser. I slowly dropped out of my
handstand, my first perfect hand stand, which I suppose I need
not mention was also my last perfect hand stand.

And there this pathetic story would end, but
apparently it wasnt pathetic enough. I brought my car into
the shop to get some brake work done a couple of days later, and
after Id been in the waiting room for an hour or so they
told me everything was ready and I went to pay the cashier, and
as I glanced down to fill out the check, I noticed an odd blur of
green on my jacket.

This turned out to be a slice of pickle, which
had plastered itself to my jacket 5 or 6 days earlier while I was
thinking about my toes in the McDonalds parking lot.
"The guys in the service department got a pool going after
you come in," said the affable cashier. "They were
betting on when you were gonna notice that pickle. One hour and
13 minutes," she said, simultaneously pushing the intercom
button. Loud cheering from the service department. I peeled off
the pickle. The guy waiting in line behind me said, "You
gonna eat that?" In my youth that would have responded with
a memorable bon-mot, but not this time. In a way I was grateful.

Id learned a fundamental Law of Life:
Nobody will ever see your perfect hand stand, but everybody will
always see the pickle plastered to your jacket for a week.
Thats just the way things are.

ASK THE ICE ON THE WINDSHIELD
EXPERT GUY

DEAR ICE-ON-THE-WINDSHIELD EXPERT GUY:

Every morning for the past I don't know how
many days I've been getting up and there has been ice on my
windshield. Sometimes it is only a little ice, & that is okay
because I can just scrape it off one-two-three with my plastic
scraper, but sometimes it's a quarter of an inch thick & then
I am kind of stuck because the plastic ice scraper won't do the
job. Is there some kind of way to keep the ice from forming on
the windshield in the first place?

(signed)

Sort of sick of all this scraping

DEAR SORT OF:

There are two main ways of keeping ice from
forming on the windshield. Number one, you can leave the car in
the garage. Number two, just leave the car running over night
with the 'defrost' switch on. The only downside to number two is,
some cars can sustain engine damage if you keep the motor running
for long periods of time without depressing the gas pedal. But
this is not a problem if you have kids; just work out a schedule
where one kid goes out to give the car some gas every 15 minutes
or so.

*

DEAR ICE-ON-THE-WINDSHIELD EXPERT GUY:

I heard that if you rub an onion on the
windshield, this will prevent ice from forming. True or false?

(signed)

Wants to give onions a shot

DEAR WANTS:

The Ice-on-the-Windshield Expert Guy had never
heard this about the onion, but he is an open minded guy and
doesn't like to dismiss any theory, no matter how stupid, out of
hand, so he went out and bought an onion, and he spent about 20
minutes rubbing it on the windshield like a son-of-a-gun, and as
far as he can tell, it made no difference at all.

*

DEAR ICE-ON-THE-WINDSHIELD EXPERT GUY:

You are supposed to SLICE the onion first.

(signed)

Maybe I should've made myself a little clearer

DEAR MAYBE:

Okay, okay, okay. The Ice-on-the-Windshield
Expert Guy has now sliced up the onion and rubbed it on the
windshield. Only then the phone rang so he went in to get the
phone and it was this guy Herb who wouldn't let him off the phone
for like 20 minutes and when the Ice-on-the-Windshield Expert Guy
came back out the two halves of the onion he'd been using were
both frozen to the windshield like big yellow warts and that is
where they still are and the Ice-on-the-Windshield Expert Guy
certainly thanks you for this excellent suggestion.

*

DEAR ICE-ON-THE WINDSHIELD EXPERT GUY:

Perhaps your readers will learn from an
unfortunate experience of mine. When the windshield on my station
wagon was far too iced over for the scraper to be of use, I took
a hammer and gently tapped the ice. This worked extremely well;
16 little taps, 16 large slabs of ice slid off the windshield.
However, on the seventeenth tap, not only did a slab of ice fall
off, but a small, web-shaped crack appeared in the windshield. In
fact, I noticed that all together there were 17 small web-shaped
cracks in the windshield. In fact, some of them were not so
little. In fact, I am giving serious thought to replacing the
windshield, or would, if my station wagon was worth more than the
300 bucks it would cost for a new windshield, which it is not.

(signed)

NAME WITHHELS ON ACCOUNT OF WHEN I READ THE
LETTER OVER I THOUGHT I SOUNDED LIKE KIND OF A DORK

DEAR NAME WITHHELD:

Thanks for the tip.

DEAR ICE-ON-THE-WINDSHIELD EXPERT GUY:

What about onion juice on the windshield?
Because it would seem to me that if you rub the sliced onion on
the windshield and that prevents ice from forming, it's not the
onion per se, but the juice of the onion that's doing the job, so
what if you just pour onion juice over the windshield? Good idea
or what?

(signed)

How about the Juice?

DEAR JUICE:

Great idea. The Ice-on-the-Windshield Expert
Guy recommends that everybody toss a dozen onions into the
blender and use onion juice instead of windshield wiper fluid. I
myself can not do this because my onion is kind of bonded to the
windshield, but I tried it with tomato juice and that won't cut
it. You end up with red ice. But by all means use this onion
juice idea, I'm 100% sure it will work.

*

DEAR BIG SHOT SUPER GENIUS ICE EXPERT:

Why don't you heat up some pennies in the oven
and just toss them at the windshield? That sounds to me like
exactly the kind of brilliant thing a big shot super genius ice
expert like yourself would do. I bet if you did this half the
pennies would end up in that grill under the windshield wiper and
make the car sound like a cement mixer every time you turned on
the heat which coincidentally is exactly what your car sounds
like whenever you turn on the heat. So why don't you try that?

(signed)

SUSPECTING YOU ALREADY TRIED THAT

DEAR SUSPECTING

This is a total lie. I would never do anything
like that. The noise the heater makes has nothing to do with the
pennies because hardly any of them went into the little grill.

CRY HAVOC AND LET LOOSE THE DOGS
OF POKER!

I once got my sister a poker-playing-dogs
calendar for her birthday, my reasoning being that (a) she likes
dogs and (b) the calendar had lots of them (and also it was
marked down about 70%). At first she seemed to like it but as she
flipped through the pages she was clearly growing more and more
disappointed. "Somethings wrong," I said.

"No, no," she insisted.
"Its really... nice."

"Great," I said, and made a beeline
for the onion dip because I sensed that if I hung around, her
next sentence was going to begin with "Its just
that..." And I learned long ago that no sentence beginning
with "its just that..." ends up anywhere I want
to go.

My potato chip had barely broken the surface of
the dip when a voice at my side said, "Its just
that..."

Well, it was just that although my sister liked
dogs, the dogs she really liked were dachshunds, and they were
under-represented at the poker table. And then there was the
whole poker thing itself. "I dont get it."

"Get what?"

"The dogs playing poker. Is it supposed to
be funny?"

"Um," I explained.

"Because it looks like its supposed
to be funny, but I dont get the joke."

"Well, theyre dogs, and theyre
playing poker," I said.

"So what?"

Theres no answer to so what.
Except possibly, so THIS, and then you dump the onion
dip in her lap, but it was her house, not to mention her onion
dip.

On top of that, I was not 100% sure that I got
them either. I hadnt given the whole poker-playing dog
thing a lot of thought, aside from calculating (Dogs + Cheap)
that the calendar would make an ideal gift for my sister. They
didnt seem funny to me, but I kind of liked them, and not
ironically, like Elvis on black velvet or "Plan 9 from Outer
Space." It bothered me a little that they were so popular,
because Im basically a snot about stuff like that, so in
the long run I found the idea that my sister didnt
get the poker playing dogs reassuring. They seemed
weird and cool, like Bahaman Gospel records or the labels on old
orange crates.

Last week two of the poker playing dog
paintings were auctioned off for $590,400, which is the highest
price ever paid for poker-playing dog pictures. Naturally there
was a lot of publicity about them, and it turns out that their
creator, one Cassius Marcellus Coolidge (1844-1934), was a
genuinely odd duck.

Until I started reading up on Cassius Coolidge,
Id thought that William A. Mitchell (1911-2004), the
inventor of Jell-O, Tang, and Cool Whip, was the most amazing
Unknown American of the 20th century, but Cassius
gives him a real run for his money. He painted the famous series
of poker-playing dogs in 1903 for a Minneapolis advertising
company and this may have been the most normal thing he ever did.
Among (many) other things, Coolidge wrote an opera about a
mosquito epidemic in New Jersey. Of course anybody can write an
opera about a mosquito epidemic in New Jersey if hes insane
enough, but Coolidge actually got his performed. And what was he
doing when he wasnt painting poker playing dogs or writing
mosquito music? Pretty much everything. He founded a bank,
founded a newspaper, patented a device for collecting streetcar
fares, worked as a druggist, a sign painter, and eventually moved
to Brooklyn where he tried raising chickens.

But he has at least one other indisputable
claim to immortality besides the poker-playing dogs: he created
what he called the comic foreground, which are those
life-sized, full-length portraits with holes instead of heads.
You paid somebody a dollar and stood behind them and stuck your
head through the hole, and there you were with your Knights of
the Round Table, or in an Old West saloon, and the guy running
the concession snapped your picture. I dont know if these
things are still around now, since you can do this sort of thing
all but effortlessly on your own computer, but in my youth every
carnival had a selection of them, and the poker-playing dog guy
invented them. And he painted hundreds of them.

I dont know if he ever put his two
greatest ideas together, to allow you to sit down at a poker
table with half a dozen cigar-smoking dogs, but I hope so. Maybe
4 or 5 ice ages from now archeologists will uncover the only
remaining trace of our civilizationa snapshot of some kid
sticking his head into a game of five card stud with a collie, a
bulldog, two beagles, and a basset hound. "They seem to have
been an unusual culture in some respects," is how I like to
think the preliminary report will begin.

WOOLLY THINKING

In general I find myself to be excellent company but there are
days when I would not answer the phone if I knew that it was me
on the other end. This morning, for instance, I found myself
thinking about Monty Woolly.

When you realize youve spent the past 10 minutes
thinking about Monty Woolly, you have to admit Aldous Huxley was
on to something when he called the stream of consciousness
the idiot monologue in our heads.

Heres how Monty crept into my idiot monologue: I was
browsing in a music store the other day and noticed the
soundtrack album for a movie called "De-Lovely," a
biopic about the great songwriter Cole Porter. Id seen the
CD around for months but had no memory of the movie itself ever
coming outI didnt recall any TV or print ads, any
reviews, any of the stars promoting it on talk shows.

Well, 20 or 25 years ago your reporter had his finger on the
pulse of American popular culture and would have known
immediately whether any given movie had been released, but
several decades of writing about himself in the third person have
taken their toll and now he doesnt have a clue.

SoIm back in the first person now, and plan to
remain here for the rest of the columnI emailed somebody
who keeps up on this sort of thing. What happened to this movie?
(This movie, I did not see fit to mention in my query, in which I
had no interest at all).

It came out last year, said my correspondent. And it was
de-lousy. "Night and Day," the bad 1945 Hollywood
biopic with Cary Grant as Cole Porter, was actually better.

This is where Monty Woolly comes in. Monty Woolly was a
Hollywood character actor in the forties, best known now for his
starring role in "The Man Who Came to Dinner." This was
one of those cant-miss productions that has so many
cant-miss ingredientsscript based on a Pulitzer Prize
winning comedy by Caveman and Hart, A-list director (Michael
Curtiz, who did "Casablanca" a couple of years later),
stellar cast headed by Bette Davisthat it misses totally;
everybody is so sure it cant fail that they dont
bother to do whats necessary to make it succeed. And Monty
Woolly, who inexplicably came out of this mess with an Oscar
nomination, gives maybe the most inadequate performance in a
movie chock full of them. Perhaps inadequate is a
little unfair. He stinks like a rancid woodchuck.

Well. Monty Woolly plays Cole Porters sidekick in
"Night and Day." I saw this on TV when I was about 12,
and only reason the movie stuck in my head at all was that Monty
Woolly was playing a character called Monty Woolly.

As it happens, Monty Woolly was playing himself, an ex-Yale
professor who hung around with one-time student Cole Porter and
then became a Hollywood character actor, but I didnt know
this when I was 12. I just knew (1) he was stinking up the place
just as appallingly as he had in "The Man Who Came to
Dinner" and (2) he was playing MONTY WOOLLY. Talk about Nice
Work if You Can Get It. It seemed to me that as a career, nothing
would be cooler than a Hollywood contract like Monty
Woollys, which I assumed stipulated (in clause 18):
"Monty Woolly shall be cast in at least 5 motion pictures
per year and shall always play Monty Woolly whether it makes
sense or not." Surely there were westerns, war movies,
Frankenstein sequels, Flash Gordon serials, where Monty Woolly
appeared as Monty Woolly, wearing clothes from his own closet and
giving performances so lousy you couldnt help but cringe.

In short, it was a niche in Hollywood that I felt that I could
one day fill. The stinking-like-a-rancid-woodchuck was important
to that goal, since even at twelve I COULD DO THAT. If my talent
were properly cultivated, I might stink like a dozen rancid
woodchucks.

Alas, it was not to be; the place in the Hollywood firmament
that I sought to occupy, like the contract I had envisioned, did
not exist, and The Man Who Would Be Monty Woolly went on to
another, albeit equally fragrant, future.

All of which lead me to wonder: first, who played the Monty
Woolly part in the new Cole Porter movie? And did the producers,
in keeping with the tradition of Cole Porter biopics, gave the
character the same name as the actor? If so, Im hoping the
part went to either Steve Buscemi or Ice T.

The other thing I wonder is, who should play ME in the movie
about me? I wonder about this a lot, and not just when Ive
been thinking about Monty Woolly. Well figure out just
which aspect of my exciting life the movie covers later. But a
couple of rules (1) no dead actors. They cant play me
because theyre DEAD. You would think this was pretty much
self-evident, but last time I ran this contest a number of people
sent in the suggestion that the late "Divine" would be
just the actor to do me justice on the big screen. (2) No bald
actors. Last time NOBODY could think of any actors with hair. If
you dont know any actors with hair, ask around. I will make
an exception for bald actors like, say, Vin Diesel (an EXCELLENT
pick, incidentally), who are bald because they have so much
testosterone that their hair spontaneously combusts. But no more
of this "Wallace Shawn" or "Charles Nelson
Reilly" nonsense.

February had been cold but thered been no
snowfall since the second week of January. Even the huge filthy
piles of snow in the bank parking lot downtown had long since
evaporated, so Calvano, Picarillo and I were startled to find
that a glacier had formed on the hill that sloped down from the
Overlook Avenue dead end. The Wilhorskys lived at the top of the
hill, and their basement windows appeared to be the source of the
glacier. Mr. Wilhorsky was an enthusiastic amateur plumber but
not a gifted one; it was not unusual to witness enormous volumes
of water or soapsuds (or worse) flowing down the hill from their
basement. But Mr. Wilhorsky usually worked his aquatic magic in
the warmer months. This was his first glacier. In fact, it was
probably the first glacier to hit town in roughly 10,000 years.
"Lets get our sleds," said Calvano. "This is
gonna be the greatest sledding ever. You think snow is good? Ice
is 20 times as good! Well fly!"

Moments later the three of us stood at the top
of the glacier with our sleds. I stepped onto the edge of the ice
and suddenly I was 30 feet down the slope. My sled was still at
the top of the hill.

"Lets learn from this,
Picarillo," said Calvano. Picarillo nodded. He carefully
placed his sled atop the glacier and even more carefully lowered
himself upon it. His runners cracked through the ice and the sled
did not move. Nor did Picarillo. "Nothins
happening," he said after a few moments. Calvano nodded. He
observed that the ice seemed thickest and smoothest in the very
center of the glacier, so thats where he aimed his sled. He
stood up, pulled the sled tight against his torso, and leapt onto
the ice. His speed was incredible. He shot the length of the
glacier in less than a second. Of course as soon as the sled
reached the end of the ice the runners buried themselves in the
frozen dirt and the sled stopped dead, but Calvano continued
skimming along the ground, maybe even picking up speed, plowing a
Calvano-shaped groove in the earth. He didnt stop until he
came to the edge of the creek. His speed slackened, he tottered
for a moment on the lip, he cried, "Aw No," and then he
tipped slowly over the side. He caught on some tree roots
sticking out of the creek bank so he didnt slide all the
way down. His boots stuck straight up over the edge of the creek,
one pointing left, one pointing right, like two sea monsters that
were no longer on speaking terms.

Picarillo and I each grabbed a leg and
retrieved Calvano. Calvano was silentI could tell he was
trying to find some way to blame this all on Picarillo, but he
couldnt quite figure out how yet. We stashed our sleds
under a sticker bush and skulked by the basement window, in the
hope of hearing Mr. Wilhorsky swearing. Instead, we heard Mrs.
Wilhorsky pleading with him. "Well, youve just got to
fix it. Mrs. Hoonhout will be here any minute. The washing
machine at the parsonage doesnt work. The pipes froze. And
its the clothing drive!"

"Only an idiot lets his pipes
freeze," muttered the man who had just unleashed a glacier
on the face of suburban New Jersey. When it became obvious that
Mr. Wilhorsky either couldnt bring himself to swear or had
already depleted his entire stock of profanities we trudged up to
Overlook Avenue, in time to see Mrs. Hoonhouts Rambler pull
into the Wilhorskys driveway. She was the Methodist
ministers wife, and she carried a large cardboard carton
full of clothing to the Wilhorskys porch.

"Look at the shirt on top," whispered
Calvano. "The one with the big tomato stain. Thats
Pete Cooks shirt!" Pete Cook lived next to the
Methodist parsonage; as far as we knew, he had never had a job,
never been married, never uttered a coherent sentence or even one
that could be printed in a newspaper without employing a dozen
asterisks, and he looked old enough to have been around when the
LAST glacier had arrived in Little Falls. He had no teeth and an
unexplained, undying hatred for Dr. Joyce Brothers. He was
everything we hoped to be someday.

"We gotta get that shirt," said
Calvano. "Its the shirt he was wearing when they had
his picture in the paper!"

"When he chugged the ketchup bottle at the
Sunday School picnic?"

"No, the time with the Exlax and the
tuba."

"We gotta get that shirt," Picarillo
agreed.

Mrs. Hoonhout poured her heart out to Mrs.
Wilhorsky on the windy porch.

"He keeps calling the parsonage and saying
he has more clothes for us to pick up! This is the fourth load
today, and theyre all filthy, and when I went to the door,
all he had on were a pair of horrible boxer shorts. I dont
think he has any other clothes left! Hes insane!"

"Weve been having a little trouble
with the washing machine..." Mrs. Wilhorsky said, but we
never heard the rest of the conversation because we were racing
to Pete Cooks house. We rang his bell for several minutes.
Would he come to the door in his horrible boxer shorts? There was
no answer. "Hey," said Picarillo. "Look! In the
garage!"

Pete Cook had cut a 55-gallon oil drum in half,
and was using one half as a giant cooking pot. Something was
simmering in it over a low fire in the garage. He stirred it
every now and then with a broomstick. The smell was unspeakable.
Even though it was February he was indeed dressed in nothing but
a pair of boxer shorts. It was not a pretty sight, but we
couldnt turn away. "What are you doin,
Pete?" asked Picarillo.

"Broilin up some more PANTS for the
minister-lady," he said. "Toss me that inner tube, will
ya? She says shes gotta WASH em before they can give
em to anybody. Lets see em wash THAT."

"Pete, do you have any other clothes
left?"

"I wont give her the
satisfaction!" he crowed. We drifted back out of his yard
and headed for home.

"Maybe we dont actually need the
shirt," said Calvano.

"I was just thinking that," I said.

We cut through the A & P parking lot.
Calvano saw a discarded shopping cart by the dumpster. "Are
they throwing that out?"

"Look at the wheel," I said. One of
the front wheels was brokena chunk of the hard rubber had
broken off and left an uneven semi circle.

"Gentlemen, I think we can salvage this
day after all!" Because the wheel was no longer a wheel we
had to carry it back to Calvanos house. We crossed Overlook
Avenue, where Mr. Wilhorsky was refusing to let Mrs. Hoonhout
bring Pete Cooks clothes into the house.

"Itll be worth it once we replace
the wheel," Calvano said. "Itll be a floating
clubhouse. We can have all our cool stuff in it, like
the cow brain and the deluxe over-the-head werewolf mask. We can
set up a club house anywhere, and then just as quickly pull it
all down and vanish!"

We could not remove the wheel. We did our best
to trim it back into a more-or-less circular shape, but it was so
much smaller than the other wheels that we had to trim them too,
and we ended up with the sort of angled wheels you see in
cartoons about Neanderthals. This took us well into March, which
time the Methodists had returned all of Pete Cooks clothes
to him; the repeated washing did nothing to remove the stench. We
toyed with the idea of mounting the shopping cart on a plywood
sheet and screwing wheels into it, but in the end we dragged it
back to the A & P parking lot.

Later it occurred to Calvano that if wed
managed to get it onto the plywood sheet we could have all ridden
it down the hill together the next time Mr. Wilhorsky produced a
glacier but that turned out to be nearly 15 years and it probably
wouldnt have been worth the wait.

I generally do not touch upon current events in
these columns but every now and then something happens that cries
out for commentary. For instance, the case of the Swedish
motorist who was arrested for calling a policeman "You big
onion!" in 1991, or the sudden appearance of floating stuff
that looked suspiciously like living brains in a Clifton,
new Jersey pond in 1995.

As a newspaper columnist, I could not but be
appalled by the recent (dare I say ongoing?) series of
revelations involving various other (that is, not me) columnists
and their conflicts of interest. Most egregiously, there was
Armstrong Williams, whose TV show accepted $225,000 in ads from
No Child Left Behind, following which he wrote columns supporting
No Child Left Behind ("I agreed with them, why
shouldnt I take the money?"). But there were other
contretemps involving the liberal blogger Daily Kos, the
conservative pundit Maggie Gallagher, and others. Although in
virtually all these cases the issue was nondisclosure rather than
* cough * bribery, you could be forgiven if you had the
impression that every columnist in the country was for sale to
the highest bidder. Of course, this is not the case. Not all of
us are driving around in new Jags, bought and paid for by tainted
money. Lord knows Im not.

This brings me to the crux of the matter: what
about ME?? How is it that nobody is waving fistfuls of cash in MY
face? What am I, chopped liver? Is it because of my personal
integrity, long a by-word in journalistic circles? Well, forget
about it. That noise you just heard was me flushing my personal
integrity down the toilet. Its gone! Wooosh! I intend to
fill that empty spot where my integrity used to be with money.
Money money money! And unlike some columnists who will
only sell out to people they agree with anyway, I will sell out
to anybody at all, even if I personally think your ideas are
dangerous and / or insane.

And I will not even charge extra for backing
your demented crackpot insanity! I am cost effective. Im
sure Armstrong is an excellent writer, but lets face it--
$225,000?? For a guy who already agrees with you? If that
isnt the literary equivalent of the Pentagon buying a $3000
toilet seat, I dont know what is. Make no mistake about it:
whatever Armstrong Williams was willing to do for thousands of
dollars, I will do for hundreds. If you cant afford
hundreds, we will work something out.

And I will not limit myself to one side of any
issue. If Ive written a column supporting some position you
find repugnant, just click the PAYPAL thingee Im going to
post on my website (as soon as I get it working) and tell me what
position YOU want me to take, and I will take it! Bear in mind
that I am not so naive that I think there is only one side to an
argumentor even two. Some complex problems may have a dozen
or more sides, and I will take them all, or as many of
them as there are people willing to fork over the long green.

Whats more, you wont find me
writing one of those embarrassing "I realize now that I
showed poor judgment by not addressing the apparent conflict of
interest" columns (unless of course you want me to write
one!). No sir: when you buy me, I will STAY BOUGHT.

QUESTION: If you admit that you will write
anything for cash, doesnt that reduce your effectiveness to
zero? Why should anyone pay attention to your opinion if they
know its bought and paid for?

ANSWER: I would NEVER write something I
didnt believe in.

QUESTION: But you just said you would.

ANSWER: That is correct. I was lying a moment
ago. I will be doing that a lot. As often as you like, in fact,
and for very reasonable rates.

QUESTION: You say that when you buy me, I
stay bought. Doesnt that contradict what you just
said about not limiting yourself to one side of any issue?

ANSWER: Not at all. There is no contradiction.

QUESTION: Yes there is. Its a total...

ANSWER: I totally dont get those car ads
where some guy is zipping down the road doing about 120 miles per
hour and goes into a moonshiners spin, and they run a
disclaimer at the bottom of the screen that says something like,
"Professional driver. Closed course. Do not attempt
this." Thats a selling point?? This car is capable of
doing a lot of cool stuff that youd better not even think
about?? Its like showing somebody eating a candy bar and
the bottom of the screen says, "Professional eater.
Dont try this at home. You can unwrap the bar and maybe
SNIFF a little, but keep away from mouth."

QUESTION: But...

ANSWER: Im afraid thats all the
time we have for questions. Its time to BUY THIS COLUMNIST.
These low, low rates wont stay here forever. Act now!

SNOW
SHOVELING TIPS

The days when a snow shovel was nothing more than a stick with
a wide, thin blade on the business end are long gone. They come
in dozens of shapes and sizes and weights. Some blades have sides
on them; some are concave, some are straight, some have heating
elements along the edge that allow you to slice through the
hardest ice as if it were nothing more than frozen water.

Once upon a time, we used the same shovel to remove snow that
we used to stoke the furnace with coaland that shovel was
often pressed into service as a sled or a TV satellite dish. No
more. Sometimes it seems there are as many kinds of snow shovels
as there are snowflakes. Now when you face off against a patch of
snow, you have to consider your options as carefully as a
champion golfer does when deciding whether to use the 9 iron or
the putter or just give the ball a little nudge with the edge of
his shoe when he thinks nobody is paying attention.

When choosing a snow shovel, the most important thing to
consider is ERGONOMICS. This word comes from the Latin
"ergo," (Do I look stupid?) and
"nomicus," (No, seriously). Back in the bad
old days, the handle of a snow shovel was invariably
a long straight rounded stick-type thing, no different from the
handle on a broom or an oven mitt. Over the years, however,
scientists discovered that a curve stick, employed as a
lifting tool, was much more cool looking than a straight one.

The most common curve used in the handle of a snow shovel is
the n, or one-hump curve. These usually
cost about 3 bucks more than the old-style straight handles, so
many people chose to put a new curve into an old handle. With a
metal handle, this is relatively simple and only requires that
you heat up a rock whose surface curves precisely the way
youd like your handle to curve. Once the rock is up to
speed, you rest the handle against it until it conforms to the
curve. NOTE: If you make the rock too hot, you will turn the
handle into a pool of molten metal, so watch your temperature.
You must also be careful that the handle does not curve too much,
or youll have a rock stuck in the middle of your snow
shovel handle. A snow shovel with the handle wrapped around a
rock is ergonomically less efficient than one without a rock, so
you will want to avoid this.

Modifying a wooden handle so that it curves is a bit more
labor-intensive, but there is no danger of melting the handle.
First, soak the handle in warm brine until the handle is
soft and pliable (generally about 120 days). Remove from the
brine and slowly bend it around a garbage can or an Ottoman. Hold
it in place using some sort of holder-type device, and
keep it secure until the wood dries out and the curve is
permanent (approximately 200 days). NOTE: The Ottoman is pretty
much out of commission during this period, so do not use your
favorite one unless absolutely necessary.

While the n curve is the most popular, multiple
curves are gaining favor. The S curve has the
disadvantage of pointing the shovel blade straight down, so that
you can only pull snow towards you, like a Vegas pit boss pulling
in the chips, but you can overcome this by affixing another
(straight) handle to the top curve of the S, which
will allow you to push the snow away from you, although
you have to be careful not to snag the first handle on anything.
The w" curve orients the blade so that it faces
straight up, which is very striking, but top scientists warn that
this is less than optimal for certain kinds of snow removal.

In general, ergonomically speaking, the more curves and humps,
the better the shovel. Many cutting edge snow shovel designers
have been experimenting with handles patterned after various
types of pasta. The rotelle or spiral-handled snow
shovel is operated by rotating the handle so that the blade lifts
the snow and then drops it to the side, over and over and over,
all in one economic motion. One problem technicians have noticed
is that its impossible to keep rotating it over and over
and over, and another problem is that it drops the snow right
back in the same place the snow just came from. But these are
minor defects in a very elegant design.

Since one type of curved handle might work well for one type
of snow but work less well for a different type of snow, the
latest innovation (not yet available to the pubic) is the
FLEXIBLE snow shovel handle, which permits you to curve and
uncurve the handle at will. In essence, this handle is a
straightened wire coat hanger, threaded through 36 inches or so
of rubber erasers, in the manner of a shish-ka-bob. You bend it,
and it holds the shape, just like Gumby. Unless you put more than
6 ounces of snow on the blade, or apply more than 6 ounces of
pressure, in which case it will not. But this means that your
shoveling has to be done slowly and carefully, and most experts
agree that wide use of the flexible handle snow shovel would
reduce snow-shovel-induced heart attacks by upwards of 70%.

I arrived at the Custom Neon Sign Shop a few
minutes late, because it was 15 degrees out and I didnt
want to wait on the sidewalk until Mulberry Street Joey Clams
turned up. In theory Mulberry Street Joey Clams and I were
partners and we both had keys to the shop, but his key worked and
mine didnt. "Oh yeah," hed said when I told
him about it. "Yeah, you got the DECOY key. In case somebody
wanted to whack you and steals the key, they still wont be
able to get into the shop."

"Well, I cant get in either,"
Id said.

"That cant be helped. If YOU could
get in using the key, THEY could get in. You see what Im
saying? Its for your protection."

I did have a key to the Custom Neon Sign Shop
van, since (unlike my partner) I had a valid drivers
license and could work a stick shift. And I used the key to
unlock the van, because it was Tuesday morning and at 8 AM the
space in front of the 40 Mulberry Street had ceased to be a legal
parking spot. But as soon as I turned the key, Mulberry Street
Joey Clams boiled out of the shop and cried, "No! No!"

"Were gonna get a ticket if it stays
here," I said.

"Just leave it," he said. "I got
an idea goin on here." I shut off the engine and we
went inside. "The idea," Mulberry Street Joey Clams
explained, "is to leave the van right where it is, until the
meter maid shows up and starts to write a ticket."

"Great idea, Mulberry Street Joey
Clams."

"Wait a minute. Thats not the idea
yet. The idea itself is, when she starts writing the ticket, I
run out and protest, in the course of which," he paused for
effect, "I put the moves on her." I stared at him.
"Yeah, yeah," he said, "I know what youre
thinking. But THIS meter maid is really cute."

I set about melting down a misspelled
"Happy Hour" sign wed been working on while
Mulberry Street Joey Clams re-wrapped the scarf around his neck
and splashed a little cologne on his face. It takes a pretty fair
splash of cologne to overpower the smell of a melting neon sign,
I thought. Then there was a blast of cold air as Mulberry Street
Joey Clams shot through the door once again, having caught sight
of the meter maid.

"Almost golden," he said, a few
moments later. "Not quite perfect, but almost. Lets
say half-perfect. Onna one hand, she didnt precisely agree
to a date."

"What precisely did she say?"

"Technically, she said, no.
However, there was this little crinkly thing at the corner of her
mouth that definitely indicates she was considering saying
yes."

"A smile?"

"I wouldnt go quite that far."

"And this is half-perfect?"

"No, no. Thats the half that
didnt go perfect. The other half couldnt a gone
better."

"The other half?"

"I got the ticket."

It was a small ticket, but it had a wealth of
information. For one thing, it had the meter maids
signature, which would have told Mulberry Street Joey Clams the
meter maids name if it had been legible. "Well, you
try writin with a mitten sometime."

"I didnt say a word."

"Yeah yeah. It would be nice to know if
shes Italian, thats all."

Another thing the ticket had was the date and
time of the traffic court hearing, in the event that Mulberry
Street Joey Clams decided to fight the ticket.

"What Im gonna do," he said,
"is show up, but instead of complaining about the ticket,
Im gonna tell the judge what a terrific job the meter maid
did."

"A terrific job of what? Giving you a
ticket?"

"Exactly." He then spun this
elaborate fantasy of the meter maid knocking on the door of the
Custom Neon Sign Shop one morning to thank him. "The
judge tole me what you said about how I give you the ticket so
polite and professional and all," the meter maid was
going to say, "and I wanted to say thanks and so on."
"Its no big deal," Mr. Suave would reply.
"Any citizen who got a ticket so professional and polite
woulda tole the judge exactly the same thing, especially
considering if the meter maid doing the ticket giving was as
pretty as the one which gave me my ticket." At this
point words failed the meter maid and she could not but succumb
to Mulberry Street Joey Clams charms.

He thumbtacked the ticket to the corkboard
where (in theory) the work orders and invoices were displayed. I
went back to melting down assorted grammatical errors until we
called it a day.

The next morning I found Mulberry Street Joey
Clams staring at the ticket, which now had the word
"DONE!" scrawled across it.

"What does that mean?" I asked.

"I dunno. Its... Well, it looks like
Uncle Dannys handwriting..."

Mulberry Street Joey Clams Uncle Danny
bankrolled our operation and (since his key worked)
sometimes stopped by afterhours to use the bathroom or the
telephone or to leave a folded newspaper containing $5000 in
unmarked twenties, with instructions to hand it to a man in a
Panama hat. But writing "DONE!" across a parking ticket
was unprecedented. Mulberry Street Joey Clams dialed his
uncles number. The half of the conversation I could hear
went:

"Yeah, hello, Unca Danny... Yeah, I seen
the ticketthats what I called... Yeah, what does
it... You took CARE of it? You mean... You mean you PAID it? Why
are you laughing? Oh. Oh, right. You fixed the ticket??
But Unca Danny! I wanna... I gotta... Listen, you gotta unfix
that ticket. Huh. You... okay. Okay." He hung up
despondently. "He says theres no such word as
unfix."

"I think that may be true," I said.

"Well, the point is, he got the ticket
squashed. So the whole telling-the-judge-and-blah-blah-blah
thing, I cant do it."

"Thats a shame," I said.
"It sounded like a foolproof plan."

"It WAS. Well, theres only one thing
to do. I gotta get ANOTHER TICKET."

This proved quite simple. That very night he
left the van overnight in a no parking zone, and in the morning
he had a new ticket. This time the signature was quite legible,
but it said "Patrolman Frank Bartilucci."

"At least hes Italian," I said.

"Thats not funny," said
Mulberry Street Joey Clams. Uncle Danny refused to fix this
ticket and Mulberry Street Joey Clams did not fight it in traffic
court. "Maybe we can write it off on our taxes," he
mused, but it turned out we couldnt.

ON THE CARPET

"Carpets getting a tad funky," I said to
myself, by which I did not mean that my carpet was dressing like
the black guy on "Starsky and Hutch" and yelling,
"Get down! Wooooo!" It was the other kind of
funky. I spent a week or so thinking about how to deal with this
and I was leaning towards the default option (also known as
"No, I dont smell anything. Why?") when I noticed
that the supermarket rented carpet cleaners.

Well, I took the plunge and brought one of these things home,
but as soon as I read the instructions, I realized Id been
taken. Get this: before you can engage the so-called carpet
cleaner, youve got to pick up all the stuff on the
carpet! I mean, correct me if Im wrong, but isnt that
pretty much the definition of carpet cleaning? While
Im picking up all this underwear, what is the carpet
cleaner doing? Sitting on the couch watching "Judge
Judy?" Maybe every now and then it hollers, "Great job,
kid. Hey, you missed a banana peel behind the radiator."
None for me, thanks. So in the end, I gave the carpet cleaner an
all-expense paid weekend at my place, and the carpet is just as
funky as ever.

This isnt the first time Ive been hornswaggled by
labor-saving devices. Every now and then when
Im rooting around in the kitchen cabinets trying to figure
out where that other smell is coming from, I come across
my Salad Chopper-Upper. I make a lot of salads and the idea of
having a machine that would do all the chopping and shredding was
mighty appealing. I would go so far as to say that, had this
machine done performed as the advertisements lead me to believe
it would perform, I would have had enough free time to gather up
the underwear and banana skins around here, and the whole
unfortunate carpet cleaner episode would never have
occurred.

Well, after hinting around for like five Christmases that
something to chop up my vegetables for me would be much
appreciated, I finally received one. And when I opened and up and
read the instructions, guess what? YOU HAVE TO CHOP UP THE
VEGETABLES BEFORE THEY FIT IN THE HOPPER. Hey, excuse me, but
isnt that WHY I GOT THE SALAD CHOPPER UPPER IN THE FIRST
PLACE? Im not saying it doesnt do a really good job
of RE-chopping the vegetables after I chop them up first; but
whats the point? What am I missing here? Its like
buying a car, and you get in it to drive to Brooklyn, and the car
says, "Uh-uh-UH. First you get yourself to Staten Island,
and Ill meet you at the ramp to the Verrazano Bridge."
Who would buy a car like that?

Well, come to think of it, I might, because I like a car with
a little attitude, assuming theres some spiffy detailing, a
really good sound system, and a heater that works okay. Which is
not the case in my current vehicle. The heat goes on, but not the
dial that determines where the hot air comes outits
always coming out of the face-level blowersand Im
tired of my feet freezing off whenever I drive for more than half
an hour. Id put up with a little back talk in exchange for
warm feet. But then theres the problem of how do I get to
Staten Island? Probably in the old car. Why the hell should I
have to use two separate cars to drive to one destination?
Its nuts.

And yet, isnt that precisely what both the carpet
cleaner and the salad chopper-upper are asking
me to do? They want me to get my carpet and or salad to the
Verrazano, at which point they graciously announce thanks,
well take it from here. Am I wrong to think this is
absurd?

Of course not. And yet: when I brought the carpet thingee back
to the supermarket and the guy at the courtesy desk asked me how
I liked it, I told him, "You know... Im sure it does a
fine job of recleaningonce the carpet has been cleaned,
but thats not what Im looking for." When I
explained about the underwear situation ("Its a matter
of calories, too," I said. "Im not going to spend
all my time bending over and picking up underwear and pizza
crusts. When I want exercise, I go to the gym. I pay a lot of
money for my membership. Im not going to waste that money
by doing all this bending over and picking up at home."), he
gave me this look. He totally didnt get it.

This is the point: Do our machines work for us, or do we work
for our machines? Im not about to scrub my place down just
to make some carpet cleaner happy. What next? Bring it some
slippers and a brandy, and give it a back rub? Not me. Ive
got other fish to fry.

Terrible Reception

My grandmother had, for all practical purposes,
a one-channel television. The dial was set to the local ABC
affiliate and she had no curiosity about what might lurk on the
other channels. Once when my father was visiting her, he idly
flipped around the dial in search of a Sunday football game and
she screamed, "Now Ill never find the right station
again!" Now this was this was 25 or 30 years ago, and there
were only five or six stations to choose from, but it might as
well have been half a million, distributed across the wavelengths
in a random, ever-shifting order. My father promised to put the
dial back to her station when the game was over, and
he did, but it was a traumatic event she mentioned frequently. A
few years later my father again changed the channel and then
changed it back, but neglected to nudge the fine tuning knob the
16th of an inch required to eliminate the visual
static; my grandmother didnt discover this until the next
day and called the local TV repair place. They sent a man to
nudge the fine tuning knob, at a cost of (the way my dad liked to
figure it) ten dollars for each 64th of an inch.

This is one of my favorite stories of
technophobia among the elderly, topped only by the lady who spent
10 minutes trying to order a Happy Meal at the ATM some years
back. Ive told both of these stories so often that I feel a
little guilty about my friend Dave, who probably had my
grandmothers fine tuning adventure in the back of his mind
when he decided to help his Aunt Ruth.

Aunt Ruth is way, way up there but she was born
a good 20 years after my grandmother and therefore absorbed about
20 years more of technological advances before her brain finally
said "Thats it! Brain full! No new information allowed
unless it concerns Buy Three Cans of Cat Food Get One Free
supermarket coupons, or celebrities with eating disorders!"

"Just before the holidays I called Aunt
Ruth at her retirement village and asked her how she was
doing," Dave told me, "and she said she was fine,
except for the TV set, which wasnt working that well. So I
said whats wrong? She said it got very poor reception. I
was surprised, because I assumed that she had cable. I do
have the cable, she said, but the reception is very,
very poor. So I said Id come and fix it. You
cant fix this, she said. Everybody here says
the TV reception is very bad. Yeah yeah, I
said. I figured it was either some incredibly tiny adjustment
[which makes me suspect that Dave was thinking about my
grandmothers misadventure] or else Id call the cable
company. It takes about 2 hours to drive to Aunt Ruths but
hey, shes my Aunt.

"So I get there, and shes watching
TV and the picture looks fine. So what happened to the poor
reception? I said. Look at it, she said.
All these STUPID PEOPLE. This one is suing the fat one
because the fat one let her dog loose and... I forget what the
dog did, but look how theyre DRESSED. Dont these
people have shirts that BUTTON?

"I waited till there was a
commercial and I clicked around. She gets about 150 channels and
every single one of them comes in clear as a bell. Aunt
Ruth, your reception couldnt be better! Are you
CRAZY? she said. These shows are TERRIBLE.
Theres nothing on I want to see! Just stupid people. Stupid
stupid stupid. I cant believe, she concluded,
how poor the reception is these days. Do you remember
December Bride? Well. Id just driven 2 hours,
and I was going to drive 2 hours back, because she hated every TV
show after 1958. Im sure theres something on
youll like. What do you want? I want to see
NICE OLD MOVIES. No problem, I said. I clicked
around and I found Turner Classics in about 10 seconds.
There you go, I said. Burt Lancaster in
"Bird Man of Alcatraz." I dont like
that movie! she said. I want to see Olivia
deHavilland. But NOT one where she DIES. Well, I
dont think theres a channel quite that, uh,
specific... I TOLD you, she said. The
reception is TERRIBLE. Everybody says so.

"And incidentally, her RADIO had terrible
reception, too. As you might guess, the problem was that it
couldnt receive any radio shows from, say, 1947."

It may sound like Im making fun of Aunt
Ruth but believe me, I am well aware that I am a finite number of
years (months!) away from being Aunt Ruth myself. The only
difference between me in 2025 AD and Aunt Ruth today is that when
I say terrible reception, Ill be talking about
the one where the brides maid threw up on my Uncle Charley.
Eventually my brain will decide that nothing of interest happened
after 1975 and I will agree with my brain wholeheartedly.
Ill take every technological advance since the invention of
Cheese-in-a-can as a personal insult.

In fact, I pretty much do already.

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